


pain, and other human sensations

by bereft_of_frogs



Series: the nine in the tree [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Kidnapping, Magic, Mythology References, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Protective Loki (Marvel), Protective Thor (Marvel), Sokovia Accords, Team Bonding, The Raft Prison (Marvel), Whump, Whumptober 2018, team revengers - Freeform, there's a lot going on everyone deserves a nap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 10:05:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 33
Words: 78,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: The Whumptober 2018 prompt fills that turned into a 31 chapter, post-Ragnarok, non-linear narrative of the adventures of Team Revengers as they bounce around the galaxy, trying to survive long enough to make it to Earth and warn the Avengers of the coming threat to the universe.Eventually, Thor and Loki do make it to Earth, but will Thor's former allies listen to their warnings? Or are they in even more danger than before?[Either dive right in, or see Chapter 33 for a Table of Contents and individual chapter summaries.]





	1. Stabbed

**Author's Note:**

> So a month ago I decided to start trying to fill the Whumptober 2018 prompts. Then I thought it might be cool to have them all set in the post-Ragnarok space adventure series I always wanted. Team Revengers, bouncing around the galaxy, having adventures and forming weird friendships and eventually weird families. And then _that_ got out of hand! 
> 
> Approximately 61,000 words later, most of the prompt fills are done, there is kind of a plot but because I'm following the order of the prompts, it will not be laid out chronologically. Some of them are just gratuitously whump-y and I feel no shame. Others are more plot-centric, or introspective. The shortest is 340 words. The longest is 8,520. (That one _really_ got away from me.) 
> 
> (Most) written in October (I've 6 left to finish), posting through November. Starting on Oct. 31 to account for the difference in days between the two months. Plus, Happy Halloween! 
> 
> Each chapter summary will have the main relationships, the setting/time period, any additional warnings that are not obvious from the prompt (like for this one, I'm not going to put 'stabbing/blood' in the additional warnings because it's inherent in the prompt fill. There are some I took in...weird directions though), and a very brief summary. 
> 
> So to provide an example and to get me to stop chattering away: 
> 
> 1\. Stabbed. Loki & Bruce Banner. The Ark. No additional warnings. Loki gets into a bit of trouble in the market.

As they continued their limping journey through the galaxy, it became clear that ruling a shipload of refugees was a far cry from the royal experience either of the princes had been raised to expect.

Sometimes it _was_ just what they had been raised to. They would arrive at a planet, usually one with a robust and prosperous economy, or at least enough finances to flow into royal coffers. They would announce their entrance, be escorted to a throne room, subjected to exhausting royal protocols and negotiations, but then at least there would be some kind of dinner. There would be wine, ranging in quality. They would dress up and braid their hair and straighten their spines and smile politely and answer shallow and asinine questions as if their entire planet had not been destroyed.   

But most of the planets towards which they steer their massive and clunky Ark (as Bruce Banner had suggested they call it, for some reason) were the seedy backwater markets that had no respectable governing bodies to speak of, only crime families and capitalist tyrants, or despots like the Grandmaster. It was easier, then, to do their trading directly with merchants and mechanics. In a certain way, they almost felt more freed.    

On this particular occasion, Thor and the Valkyrie went off to a supplier she’d done business with in the past. Heimdall stayed with the ship, where the citizens worked on loading the meager supplies they’d already gathered. Loki and Bruce were thus set loose on the market stalls, with vague instructions to find anything that “looked useful.”   

Loki had smirked at his brother’s instructions.    

“And what, pray tell, is your operating definition of useful?”

Thor merely gave him a little shove, and a roll of his eye. “Just stay out of trouble, brother.”    

Loki wanders through the stalls, examining the wares. Despite his mockery of his brother, Loki _did_ have a list of things he needed that he might find in the market stalls. It was mostly magical tools and supplies, once plentiful on Asgard, but rare in these parts of the galaxies. If he could get some of them, his magic repairs to the ship would be made easier. Healing would go smoother. But as he looked around at this market, he felt his hope dwindle. Stolen goods being fleeced, weapons, recreational drugs. That was what was mainly on offer here.    

He scowls at a stall filled with beasts in cages, but then his eyes alight on a stall of books.    

He thinks for a moment about how his brother would tease him mercilessly if he found him with his nose planted in a book, then gives in.    

He’s flipping through an unfortunately outdated volume of herbs and their medicinal uses when something collides with him. A body slips past him, a fist hits his lower back and he stumbles, dropping the book. Whoever hit him was gone in the next moment.    

Loki spins to chase after him, fury and indignation hot in his veins. Or, he tries to. His knees buckle as he turns and he hits the ground hard. He manages to drag himself into the dark space between two stalls as he registers something hot begin to drip down his back.    

 _Shit_ , he thinks as he gropes behind him. His fingers brush the wound and he seizes in pain. His breath comes quick as panic grows. He’s been stabbed in a dirty bookseller’s stall. _Wonderful_.  

And it severed his spine.    

Or at least significantly damaged the cord. His legs are numb and tingling and he can feel his magic tied up in holding the nerves together. He’ll heal but it will take time and he won’t be able to use his magic to stop the bleeding, or defend himself if whoever did it came back. And he won’t be able to walk until it’s done. He presses his hand harder against the wound, ignoring the pain and tries to think. He doesn’t have time to wait to be missed. The blood is already starting to pool beneath him.    

A projection. He can use just a little magic to send a projection. But the ship is too far, and he doesn’t know where Thor and Valkyrie are. But Bruce…Bruce should be around here somewhere. He closes his eyes and loosens some of his seidr from holding nerves together. His legs go suddenly, sickeningly dead. He swallows down the rising panic and projects his consciousness into a double.    

Then he walks, not runs, but walks _quickly_ , trying not to draw attention to himself, until he finds Bruce, poking at some oddly green meat hanging in a crowded stall.    

“Banner!” Bruce turns, jumping at Loki's sudden intrusion. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to startle you.”    

“Yeah, no worries, what do you think this weird-”   

“We don’t have much time, I need your help.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “What did you do?”

In his physical body, Loki grinds his teeth in frustration. “I did nothing. Well, not this time at least. It’s possible that…never mind. What you need to know is that I’m in a bit of a bind and I need you to follow me.” Bruce looks hesitant. Because of course, why would he trust Loki of all people? Loki sighs. “Look.” He reaches out a hand and sticks it straight through Bruce’s arm.    

“The hell, why are you an illusion-”   

“Because I have been stabbed, I do not know by whom but I cannot move and cannot defend myself and I need you to _help me_.” Something in his words or his expression finally moves Bruce.    

“Lead the way.” Loki follows the pull of his physical form back through the market alleys, Bruce close behind. When he’s close enough, he releases the magic of the projection and it flows back into his body. For a tense moment it does nothing but then he feels a jolt of agony as the nerve endings are roughly pulled back together. His legs burn, feeling like they’re being pricked over and over by tiny needles. He’s sitting in a growing pool of blood. “Fuck, you weren’t lying.”    

“Why would I lie about being stabbed?” Loki cries through chattering teeth.    

“I don’t know, you’d have your reasons I imagine. They wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, but you’d have them.” As Bruce talks, he strips off his sweater. “Here, take off your cape, it’s ruined anyways. We’ll use that to staunch the bleeding. Wear this, you need to stay warm.” A hysterical laugh bubbles up in his throat at that. Bruce frowns down at him, but moves quickly on. “So you can’t stand at all?” Loki shakes his head. “Well, we can’t just stay here…”   

“They could come back.”    

“I’ll have to carry you.”    

“Don’t worry Dr. Banner, I’m equally disturbed by the concept.” Loki huffs. “If there was another way, I would certainly prefer it. But I don’t think I have time to wait for my brother to return, or for Heimdall to notice we’re taking too long.” It’s an admission of vulnerability, and thankfully Bruce does not insult him with either comment or mockery. He just helps him put on the sweater, pinning the soaked fabric of his cape to his throbbing back, and then awkwardly hoists him onto his shoulders. Loki cries out in pain, biting down on his lip to silence himself.   

Loki hangs on tightly, arms around his neck, and Bruce keeps one hand under each of his thighs. They’re both trembling; Bruce from strain, Loki from shock.   

“Keep to the shadows,” Loki whispers, when he’s surfaced from the cloud of pain. “To the outskirts of the market. If you take a left here you can avoid the most crowded streets.”    

It’s quiet for a while, Bruce focusing on carrying Loki’s tall form. Loki’s head has dropped to Bruce’s shoulder without him even realizing it. He focuses on healing, on breathing evenly through the pain. He’s nearly dropped off to unconsciousness when Bruce rouses him awake.   

“What were you doing anyways?”    

“Looking at books.”

Bruce snorts. “That’s likely.”    

“I swear it. I was looking through a book of herbs to see if it might tell me about what was available in the planets in our path.” Loki feels a flash of sudden annoyance at Bruce’s disbelief, though he knows it is with good reason. “If you go back, you’ll find it on the floor of the stall, just as I described. I like books, is that really so unbelievable?” Acid leaks into his voice.    

“Fine, fine. If you weren’t doing anything, why were you stabbed?”    

“Who knows. It could have been a frustrated mugger — I never keep anything valuable in my _actual_ pockets — or perhaps a gang initiation, or someone who needed a fresh corpse and was planning on returning once I’d bled out, or a random act of violence…I suppose we may never know.”

“Thor’s going to want to go after them.”   

“Yes, and that’s when you will help me explain to him that he cannot go running after a mysterious attacker in a place such as this - a place where this sort of thing probably occurs daily without comment. Didn’t you see the bookseller? He took one look at me lying in the alley and turned his back and went into the stall. And I can’t blame him. In places like these sticking your neck out for strangers could mean your life. No, we’ll probably never find whoever did this, it will be useless, and further, undignified, for the king of Asgard to go tearing through a seedy backwater market…”   

“Okay, okay, you make a good point. As long as…” Bruce hesitates. “You’re sure you’re going to be alright?” Loki is touched to hear a note of actual concern in Bruce’s voice.    

“Of course. Despite it being unluckily placed, to cut the nerves, it’s thin and clean. I think the bleeding’s already slowed some. My legs _hurt_ , but that’s better than the numbness. I’ll be fine by the time Thor and Valkyrie get back.” Bruce shakes his head.    

“Unbelievable. You can just repair spinal nerves in the span of hours. Do you have any idea how miraculous that is? How many people tried their entire careers to regenerate nerves? And we still can’t do it?”   

“Of course, Midgardian technologies are abysmally archaic-”   

“Never mind.”    

They were almost at the ship. Loki can see Heimdall at the entrance. Bruce, sweating and trembling with exertion, looks profoundly relieved.    

“Thank you, Bruce,” Loki says quietly.    

“It’s nothing. If you’d told me two years…or five years? I don’t know, Sakaar time was weird…if you’d told me in New York that I’d be carrying you on my back…man, I would never have believed it.”    

“I don’t think I would have either. But thank you.” Heimdall’s spotted them now. He’s approaching, looking concerned.    

“Some trouble, Prince Loki?”    

“Oh you know,” Loki says with a tired smile. “I was stabbed in the back. Just another day at the market.”   

It was almost worth it to see the expression on Heimdall’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Bruce Banner are the weird friendship I always wanted out of this AU. 
> 
> Final notes on how the rest of this is going to go:  
> 1) TBH I take some liberties as to things like world-building, magical abilities, or why and how Bruce and the Hulk go back and forth. Also definitely take some liberties on what 'whump' is. I feel like the existence of a plot voids this as whump? Eh.  
> 2) The timeline is also fairly flexible, though I like to think this chapter is fairly early on in their journey, so they're kind of testing the waters of these friendships. So yeah, if your question is 'what is the linear plot of this AU' even I do not know.  
> 3) I'm not sure _all_ of the prompts tagged 'The Ark' actually happen. _Each_ of them happen in the AU, but maybe not _all_ of them. Hope that makes sense. If every single one happened, this would be the single most unfortunately approximate 18 month journey in the history of the world. So you can pick and choose which ones actually happened in your mind. (Excepting the ones that obviously figure more closely into the plot. And obviously ones that reference the events of another are linked together. Or just all of them happened, this journey is terrible, Team Revengers needs a break and a nap.) 
> 
> Prompt List from: whumptober2018.tumblr.com
> 
> Find Me on Tumblr at: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	2. Bloody Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2\. Bloody Hands. Thor. The Ark. Warnings: unnamed character death. There's an explosion and Thor's trying his best.

Thor’s hands are covered in blood. A combination of blood. His own. The girl’s - the apprentice healer’s. He nearly lets out a sob, but swallows it down, letting the air out of his lungs in a long whoosh instead.    

There had been an explosion in the engines. An accident, a foolish accident, and Thor and the young Asgardian girl were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.   

Thor reacted too late to the sound of grinding metal, to the cry of one of the Sakaaran mechanics as the joints fail. It’s the shrapnel that gets them. Thor manages to shield the girl from the concussive wave, but the shrapnel had torn through them.    

One long, jagged piece of steel catches the girl in the leg, severing the artery in her thigh.    

She had bled out unbelievably fast.    

Thor had held his hands clamped over her leg, trying to staunch the flow of blood. He tried to pinch the end of the artery closed. He had shouted at her to hold on, tried his best to stop the fountain of blood, cursed, but she had still slipped away. When he looked up at her eyes he knew she was gone. Blood had soaked through everything, pooled on the floor around them. Thor now can’t take his eyes off his hands, stained bright crimson.

She had been so young. He had never bothered to learn her name, but she had been soft and kind, if nervous and bumbling that time when Loki fell ill.    

He faintly hears someone calling his name. It’s probably the Valkyrie, he thinks. Or Bruce. Maybe Loki. They would come for him. They’re trying to move some of the metal, the metal that trapped he and the corpse down in the storeroom. The corpse that had been a girl.    

He feels dizzy, nauseated. He’s shaking, his hands trembling before him. Dully, he realizes it’s not just emotional shock that’s making him shake. There’s pain, creeping in past his shock. Hot, wet blood drips from several cuts, including a deep gash in his side. He should try to stop it, but he can’t stop looking at his hands.    

He barely even registers it when the rescuers break through the twisted metal. A cool hand grasps his shoulder.   

“I tried,” He gasps. “I tried.”    

“Brother, quiet,” Loki says. His hands are pressing down on the biggest gash now, light green sparkling at his fingertips.    

“I couldn’t save her, there was just so much blood. She bled out too fast,” He slurs.    

“You can’t save everyone,” Loki says. “It wasn’t your fault. You did you best.”    

“My best has never been good enough.” Loki’s wide green eyes blink up at him, confused. Thor’s best has failed the ones he is supposed to care for, time and time again. “It’s never been good enough.”   

“Stay with me,” He hears. Loki’s voice is insistent. “Hold on.”   

“I can’t,” Thor whispers. Loki calls his name. Then the blackness closes in on his vision and he knows no more.  
  
    

He wakes up hours later, on his side, shirtless. He raises his head a little and sees stark white bandages wrapped around his middle, padded over the largest wound in his side. He drops his head back down.    

Loki is fast asleep in the chair next to his bed, curled into a tight ball. Someone has cleaned off the blood, but Thor looks down at his hands and thinks he can still see the stains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thor just wants to save everyone. 
> 
> Also, clearly this references an upcoming prompt.
> 
> I hope everyone had a good Halloween! I went to Rocky Horror and didn't get home until 3am and my body is like...you need to stop doing this. (Hence posting this at almost 11...) 
> 
> As always: 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com
> 
> Find me on tumblr: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	3. Insomnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Loki, Tony Stark. House Avengers. Warnings: implied past torture. No one's sleeping in the Avengers household.

Loki’s hand hovers above the door handle, trembling. _Don’t wake Thor, you don’t need to wake Thor_ , a small voice in his head told him. _He needs his rest_.    

 _Loki_ needed his rest, the selfish side of him answers back. And he couldn’t get any, when every time he closed his eyes he was _there_ and alone and he opened his eyes grasping for someone who wasn’t there.    

He takes a deep breath, hand forming a fist, raising it to knock-   

“What the hell are you doing?” Loki jerks back, turns, and tries to suppress the instinctual defensive stance. It’s Tony Stark, looking at him with an accusation plain on his face.    

Things had not been easy, for any of them, since Thor and Loki had crashed landed here on their escape from Thanos. The physical wounds had healed, and Thor had managed to get Tony to agree to let Loki have free reign of the Avengers complex, but there is still a simmering tension in the air. As he predicted, Tony plainly believed he had somehow enchanted his brother, tricked him into trusting him again. There was nothing either of them could say to convince Tony he was wrong. It was understandable, Loki admitted, justified suspicion. Most of the time he dealt with it by ignoring the tension, keeping out of Tony’s way, and consuming himself with trying to find a way to contact the Valkyrie.    

It was just particularly annoying at this late hour, when he hadn’t slept a full night in nearly a week. The exhaustion pulls at him and he just doesn’t want to deal with this right now.    

“I was-” He starts.    

“You were lurking around my house-”   

“I wasn’t-”  

“-planning who knows what-” Fury rises in Loki.    

“I wasn’t, and I don’t have to explain myself to you.”   

“Don’t have to…you’re in my house, horns, you’ll explain yourself when I want you to explain yourself.”   

“You insolent-”   

The door wrenches open, revealing a bleary eyed Thor.    

“ _What_ is going on?” There’s a moment of resounding silence.    

“He was…lurking, I don’t know what he was doing.”   

“I wasn’t doing anything!” Loki cries, indignant.    

“Then what are you doing, in the middle of the night, skulking around-”   

“Enough!” Thor says. “Loki-”    

“It is clear I am not welcome,” Loki says, anger brimming. “So I’ll just go back to my room then.”    

“Good!” Tony says at the same time Thor says, “No, Loki, wait-”    

But he’s already gone, back in his room in a blink, curling on his side in bed. He hugs his knees to his chest and tries to ease his breath and racing heart.    

A small, tired part of him still wants Thor.  
   

Thor hears Tony out patiently, still feeling bleary and foggy with sleep.    

“Stark, I don’t think Loki had something nefarious planned at 1 am.”    

“You trust him too much, he could have done anything to you while you were sleeping.”    

“Stark…”    

“He was hovering outside your door.”    

“Stark.”   

“You can’t keep trusting him.”   

“Stark, he’s my baby brother,” Thor snaps finally. “What do you want me to say?”    

“He’s not a baby, Thor, he hasn’t been a baby - hasn’t been innocent in a long time. I don’t know what happened between you, but you can’t forget how dangerous he is. We have to-”   

“Tony, can we just talk about this in the morning?” Thor rubs his face. “It’s the middle of the night. I just want to go back to sleep.” Tony fixes his jaw.    

“Fine. Fine.”    

And he leaves Thor to finally go back to sleep.    

Not that Thor had been sleeping terribly well. He kept waking in sudden panics and had to calm himself by repeating, over and over, in a whisper _it’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay, you’re safe_.    

He has a sneaking suspicion of what Loki was doing outside his door. This suspicion is confirmed the moment he collapses back to the mattress and with a crackle of light, Loki appears next to him.    

“Thor, we need to talk about Stark.” Thor rolls onto his back as Loki starts talking, railing against Tony Stark and his surveillance and his suspicions. He would be annoyed, would tell Loki that they’d talk about it in the morning like he did with Tony, but in the dim light he can also see the dark shadows under his eyes, the way his hands would not still, the wanness of his cheeks.    

“What were you doing outside my door?” He finally asks, interrupting the monologue. “The truth, Loki.”    

“I couldn’t sleep,” He says in a whisper, after a moment’s hesitation.    

“Nightmares?” Thor whispers back. Loki nods. “Stay here.” He finds his brother’s hand in the darkness. “I couldn’t sleep either. I was afraid too.” He tugs on the hand and pulls Loki down, tucking him under his arm with his head resting on his chest. He draws the blankets up around them and for the first time all night Thor feels his fear fully dissipate. He rubs Loki’s shoulder absentmindedly.    

“It’s just so quiet,” Loki says. “Being alone.” Thor hums in agreement. His room had felt unnaturally silent since he moved there from the infirmary. “I even found myself missing the Valkyrie’s snoring. Even…even _there_ , there were so many sounds and I could still hear you breathing.”    

“I know, it’s too quiet here.”    

“And cold.”

Thor tucks the blanket a little closer around them. “Good night, brother,” He whispers. Loki’s already dropping off, relaxing into him. Thor sleeps dreamlessly for the first time in weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Thor and Loki have some how made it to Earth, separated from everyone else. How you ask? Don't worry, it will make sense in time! 
> 
> They're having A Time finding their place on Earth and Tony's having an equally terrible time trying to figure out what to do with them. He's somewhat unnerved to have Loki just chilling in his house...
> 
> Also, if anyone couldn't tell, I'm kind of a sucker for platonic bed-sharing...yeah...
> 
> As always: 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com 
> 
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com 
> 
> See you tomorrow! Tomorrow's prompt is sadly though, the shortest by a long ways. So it will be a quick read!


	4. "No, Stop!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Loki. The Ark. No additional warnings. A fight concludes with an old game.

Thor at least is enjoying himself. Getting his blood pumping with a good bar fight against clumsy, brutish goons, because of course he is. Loki will admit later that he did have a bit of fun. He lashes out with his daggers, striking precisely.    

One of their clubs gets around his defenses and strikes its mark. Bone crunches and gives way and the joint falls out of alignment with a pop.    

Loki grits his teeth against the pain. He stabs the one who struck him and falls back. The injury takes a moment and a touch of magic to heal enough for him to rejoin the fray.    

“Having fun?” Thor cries, a smile on his face. “Let’s do ‘Get Help.’”    

“Brother, no, stop-” But it’s too late, Thor is grabbing him and he has no choice but to tuck and roll as he strikes their remaining assailants. He hits the ground — and their bodies — hard and cannot contain his pained cry as his nearly healed shoulder dislocates again.    

Thor has the good graces to wince. Their opponents defeated, Loki sits among their unconscious bodies and sullenly waits for his shoulder to stitch itself back together.

“I hate you,” He says. “I truly hate you, brother.” Thor smiles sheepishly and crouches before him.    

“I’m sorry.”    

“I don’t forgive you.”    

“Fair.” They’re quiet for a second, Loki focusing on healing.    

“No more ‘Get Help.’ And I mean it this time.”    

“Of course.” But the way Thor says it suggests it’s not really the last time they’ll play this particular game. They’ve had this exact exchange a dozen or more times before.    

“It’s humiliating.”    

“It’s hilarious. Does your shoulder hurt terribly?”

Loki adopts a noble air, sniffing. “It’s bearable.”    

“Oh, how will you endure?” Thor leans over and presses his lips to Loki’s shoulder, gently over the healing joint. “Better?”

Loki sighs dramatically. “I suppose I can be moved now.” Thor smiles.    

“Come on. Let’s get back to the ship before they wake up and I have to throw you at them again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, the shortest by a long ways! And the silliest. 
> 
> I like to think this type of exchange happened so regularly, it’s almost part of the game. I think if Loki really wanted to stop doing ‘Get Help’ he could, but he likes both the reminder of their childhoods and the way that it gets all of Thor’s attention on him, without too much suffering. He’d just never actually admit it. 
> 
> I also played fast and loose with the concept here (like I did with most things in this work lollll), but I like the idea that ‘Get Help’ eventually just became shorthand for ‘I’m going to chuck my younger brother at my problems’.
> 
> As always: 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com
> 
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	5. Poisoned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Valkyrie & Loki. The Ark. No additional warnings. A dinner proves dangerous for Thor and the Valkyrie must rush him back to the Ark before it's too late.

“You’ve got a stalker, majesty.” Thor glances up at the Valkyrie, then behind him. The princess who had been following him into the feasting hall is very suddenly fascinated by a worn tapestry hanging on the wall. He sighs.   

“She’s been dogging me all day.”   

“So, will you take her to bed? Or shall I…console her?”   

“You’re welcome to console her in any way you see fit, my lady.” Thor winks. “I think my taking her to bed might send some unintended signals. I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea about the depth of my feelings for her.” Which were quite shallow, Thor admits to himself. She was pretty, but slightly boring. Perhaps if they had more time to get to know each other, but since Thor and the Valkyrie would be departing after dinner and Thor had been rather unimpressed with her at lunch, it was useless. He’d barely spared her more than a passing thought until the Valkyrie pointed out her lurking.   

“Hm, yes.” The Valkyrie leans against the wall, sweeping her blue cape to the side. “Her father’s definitely after you for a husband.”

Thor blinks. “Husband?! Why in the Nine-”    

“You’re a very eligible bachelor, your majesty, especially for younger princesses. You’re still a king, but an impoverished one without a homeland, so while you’ll still have to marry noble, heiresses are out of reach. Fourth daughters, like your little shadow, who stand to inherit nothing of their own, will be all over you, all across the galaxy. You should probably prepare yourself.”   

“It sounds exhausting.”   

“Yeah, poor you, disappointing pretty maidens across the galaxy. How sad. Oh. That’s the bell for dinner.”    

“Don’t drink too much,” Thor warns. “I want to be back at the ship at a reasonable hour.”    

“You got it, majesty.” She flips her hand in a little wave as she turns towards the table.  
   

Thor is seated on the highest dais, next to, of course, the poor princess. Her father the king, ever hopeful, kept glancing over at her and Thor as she tried to engage him in conversation. It’s no use. Thor is in some kind of mood, growing withdrawn and reserved through the meal. Valkyrie sits among the common folk, keeping to herself for once.    

She probably shouldn’t have told him all that about the suitors. She’d learned from Loki that he’d had a bit of an affair with a mortal woman recently, though things seemed to have cooled. Plus, there was that simmering reluctance to be king that Thor still hadn’t quite shaken. Despite having taken up the mantel, and not doing too terrible a job at it, it seemed like occasionally he forgot he had ascended to the throne. Reminding him of his eventual duty to marry a noble woman of some kind and produce heirs only served to make him sullen. He seemed content enough to remain a bachelor, with an equally oblivious Loki being the only remaining heir to the throne. Loki seemed to forget his own place half the time as well.    

 _They were a mess_ , the Valkyrie reflects, watching the princess try to draw Thor into conversation again. _Asgard destroyed, the remnants held together by two royals who seem hellbent on ignoring the fact that they are royals. We really are screwed._ But as she downs her glass of ale, she thinks Asgard actually might be better off this way.

She’s on her second glass of the dark, barley ale they brew on this planet, when something at the main table catches her eye. Thor, leaning back, pressing a hand to his chest. A look of pain on his face as he stumbles back from the feasting table, his veins turning a bizarre purple color.    

She’s on her feet in a second, as chaos breaks.   

“Your majesty!” The young princess gasps, hand pressed to her chest.    

“Our guest has been poisoned! Fetch the palace healers!”

The Valkyrie rushes up to the dais and grabs Thor by the arms. “Thor, what-”   

“Can’t breathe,” He coughs out. His chest heaves with the effort of drawing breath and his eyes grow glassy. “Can’t…Loki-” Valkyrie doesn’t know if Thor is mistaking her for Loki, telling her to say goodbye to Loki for him, or telling her that Loki can help, but for her own sanity and sense of control over the situation she chooses to believe it is the third.    

“Loki…his magic?” She whispers to him. She think he might nod but in the next moment his eyes roll back in his head and he falls into a dead faint, collapsing to the ground.    

“The healers are on their way,” The king says quickly. “We will get him to a private room, and the healers will take care of him and he’ll be fine in no time, my lady.”    

“No, I will take him back to the ship.” She says firmly. She stands over Thor’s unconscious body.    

“My lady, I must insist.”

She doesn’t know what’s going on, but something inside her is screaming to take Thor and run. He makes a choking noise behind her. Her heart is pounding with fear, and that little voice just keeps saying _run, run, run_ —   

“No, we will return to the ship.” _Loki will be able to fix this_ , She attempts to calm herself. _That’s what Thor was trying to tell you. His magic can burn the poison out of him in a minute, it’ll all be fine._    

“Lady Valkyrie, we can handle this, my daughter has much experience caring for the ill as a volunteer in our hospital, she can take care of him.”    

“I’d be happy to do it, my lady.”

The Valkyrie grits her teeth and stands her ground. “The king needs his brother, a powerful mage. Our ship is the best place for him to be healed, especially if someone in the court wants him dead.”   

“I really must insist, lady.” The Valkyrie draws her sword.    

“Back off! Fetch us a horse and let us go!” The king tries to argue, but a flash of Dragonfang and a flex of her muscles ceases argument. One of the palace guards help her to carry Thor, listless and coughing, to a horse and cart provided.    

“Are you certain you should not stay-” She flashes the guard a glare and he silences. Before she leaves, she touches Thor’s check.    

“Hold on, majesty. We’ll be home soon.” She pushes the horse as fast as it will go, across the fields and towards the ship.  
       

Heimdall meets her at the entrance.    

“Take him to the infirmary, I’ll get Loki.”   

“What happened?”   

“I don’t know, poison in the meal, something like that, Loki should be able to burn it out.” She runs, finding Loki in their room reading. “You have to come quickly, Thor’s been poisoned.”

His eyes go wide. The book falls from his fingers. “What? Why? By whom?”   

“I’m sure we’ll figure that out later, but first you have to _fix him_.” They rush through the halls.    

“How could you let this happened?” Loki snaps.    

“I didn’t _let_ anything happen, it just fucking happened.”    

“You’re supposed to-”    

“What? You want me to test every bite of food-”    

“I’d like you not to let your king be _murdered_ ,” He spits, but sounds so terrified that the Valkyrie lets the conversation drop.    

When they get to the infirmary, Loki stumbles to Thor’s side, green light already blooming on his hands. Thor is still choking, the violet veins standing out even more starkly from his pale skin as his back arches with the need to breathe. Loki presses down on his chest, squeezing his eyes shut. The green light chases out the poison, scouring it from Thor’s veins. When he’s done, the violet is gone and Thor’s breathing evenly.  

Loki lets out a breath, shoulders relaxing as the panicked tension drains from him.    

“See, I knew you could do it,” The Valkyrie says faintly. Her hand is shaking. She squeezes it into a fist to get it to stop. Loki doesn’t respond, his eyes still closed. He moves one of his hands to Thor’s forehead and they glow green again. “What are you doing?”    

“Finding the source.” He says. “It’s odd, it wasn’t quite enough to kill him, just right on the edge…It’s natural too, some kind of plant. Who could have…?”   

“I think I can help with that,” Heimdall says gravely. “I can see the poisoner.”  
   

They combine Loki’s magical investigating with Heimdall’s Sight and five minutes later, Loki and the Valkyrie are on their way back to the castle. He grabs her hand and in a blink they’ve traversed the two miles from the ship and are in the castle, past all the guards and fortifications. Loki walks a little ahead, his long legs carrying him quickly to the hall, cape sweeping behind him. He is radiating pure fury. He throws open the door.  

The feast has dispersed in the wake of the chaos but the king and two of his daughters, including the princess who had been so enamored with Thor, still sit around the raised table, deep in conversation.    

“What is this? Who let you-” The guards rush at them and Loki’s magic pushes them all back.    

“So that was your master plan? Poison my brother to delay us, nurse him back to health, so he would feel so _grateful_ , all in the vague hopes you can foist off one of your unmarried daughters on us.”

Understanding dawns on the king’s terrified face. “Your highness…”    

“Told you he was a powerful mage,” The Valkyrie says with a wicked smile.    

“Were you just too unskilled for a love potion? Or were you just too lazy, wanting to take the easy way of a quick poison instead of brewing something yourself?” Loki climbs the stairs.    

“These accusations are-”    

“How dare you _touch_ him!” He draws a knife.    

“Papa!” The princesses are swept aside by Loki’s magic as well, pinned to the walls.    

“Your highness, we can talk about-”

Loki shoves him hard against the wall, knee pressed hard against his chest. He holds the knife to the old king’s throat. “I should kill you for hurting my family,” He presses the knife harder in, drawing a thin line of blood. “I should kill you to spare any other poor souls who find their way into your clutches and you decide are eligible suitors for your whore daughters. I should fucking kill you for touching him,” He snarls.    

“My prince,” The Valkyrie says. Loki glances back at her and she inclines her head, raises an eyebrow in warning. “Perhaps we should be merciful.” Killing the king would cause more problems for them then it would solve, especially since it would really only solve Loki’s rage. Loki looks at her for a long moment.    

His hand shakes on the knife.    

“I really want to kill you. But she’s right. I won’t. You’re very lucky.”    

“I-”    

“No speaking.” The king’s jaw snaps shut. “Don’t speak to me. I’m going to give you a very, very generous warning,” Loki points the knife in his face. “I will have our Watcher keep an eye on you. If you pull this on anyone else, I will come back here and slit your fucking throat. If you try to contact or communicate with my brother or any Asgardian of any rank, in any way, I’ll make it even slower. Do you understand?” The king nods desperately. The magic releases and Loki steps back, letting him fall to the floor. “Let’s go home, Valkyrie.” As he walks down the steps green light sparks in his wake. The flowers on the table wither and die.    

The Valkyrie snags a bottle of wine off a table.    

“And I’m taking this.” She waves at them and follows Loki out.    

The green light spreads. All across the castle and a mile in every direction, every green and living thing at once crumbles into dust.  
   

Loki doesn’t stop shaking in fury their entire walk back to the ship. They could teleport, but it seems like he needs to walk off some of his rage, so the Valkyrie doesn’t ask him to use his magic, or complain about the trek.   

“I’m sorry,” He says when they’re in sight of the Ark. “I shouldn’t have accused you of…letting this happen. I know it’s not your fault.”    

“Thanks. Didn’t take it personally. I know you were scared. And you were kind of right, I should have been watching more closely, I should have felt that things were off.”

“He’s just…I don’t really have anyone else.”    

“I know, highness. I know. And I’m sorry I didn’t let you kill the old man. But hey, you scared the fuck out of him. And doing that to all the plants? They’ll probably be telling legends about you for years to come.”

Loki manages a shaky smile. “I really wanted to kill him,” He says petulantly.    

“I know. Me too.” The climb aboard, already hearing Thor’s voice. “But it’s better this way.”   

“What do you mean, _you let them go back?_ ” Thor paces, scrubbing a hand over his short hair. He looks completely back to normal, if a little paler than usual.    

“Your majesty, you should sit-”    

“Thor, they’re probably fine-”    

“I’m going after them.”    

“Not necessary,” Loki says. “We’re back.”

Thor spins. “You fools, _what_ were you thinking?”    

“I don’t know that I was thinking, I was so angry.”    

“You weren’t thinking, of _course_ you weren’t thinking.”

Loki touches the center of his brother’s chest with the light of his magic sparkling at his fingertips. “Hm. How are you feeling?”    

“I’m _fine_.” Loki waits another moment before he releases the seidr, satisfied. Then he throws his arms around Thor’s neck. Thor smiles and rests his hands loosely on his brother’s back. Over Loki’s shoulder, he and the Valkyrie meet eyes.    

“No more disappointing maidens for a while now, I think.” He says with a small smile.   

“I heartily agree, majesty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki was super pissed. I really enjoyed writing his and the Valkyrie's little revenge mission, because while he's just full of rage and murder, Valkyrie's feeling a little giddy now that the adrenaline's wore off and is just like 'lol told youuu'. She should probably test that wine before drinking it, though. 
> 
> She's also probably right, Asgard's likely better off with a king who occasionally forgets he's supposed to be a king. If you think about it, Thor went from abdication, to wandering around the galaxy, to king in a fairly short period of time. He's still adjusting. And Loki, in this 'verse at least, I think assumes he's been taking out of the line of succession after the whole 'enchanted my father and usurped the throne' thing (and everything else) and assumes that people only call him 'prince'/'your highness' out of habit and/or mockery. This will come up a bit more later. ;-) 
> 
> Happy Sunday! Plus happy daylights savings for any other North Americans! So happy to get an extra hour of sleep last night. 
> 
> As always: 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com
> 
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	6. Betrayed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Tony Stark. House Avengers. Warnings: very brief mention of dehumanizing language, nothing too bad though. Thor and Tony have The Fight and Thor takes a field trip to Norway.

Tony had to admit, it was wild seeing Loki like this. And Thor. They were nothing like they were during the battle of New York, all the high Shakespearean talk and dramatics. Now, they are almost silent as Thor holds his brother’s hands and Loki dissolves.   

They’re not sure what set off the panic attack. Just that Tony had been talking to Loki and his expression had gone distant in a horrifyingly familiar way and his breath started to come short.    

“Ah, hey, Thor, buddy.” It took Thor only a glance to see what was happening, guide Loki to the couch and sit on the coffee table in front of him. He grasped Loki’s hands between his own.    

“It’s okay,” He says. “I’m here.” The panic really ripped through Loki then. He gasps for breath, tears streaming down his cheeks. Thor keeps his voice low and even, never letting go of his hands, even as his breath eases and he begins to calm. When it’s over, Loki drops his head to Thor’s chest and Thor rubs his bowed back. “That’s it, you’re alright. I’m here.”    

Tony’s mouth feels very dry. He knows _exactly_ how that feels.    

There’s a split second of pity, of sympathy, but then a voice says _what if it’s all an act_ and in his mind’s eye he can see Loki smirking and a great hole being torn in the sky.    

He hardens himself and walks away.  
   

The night they had appeared, Tony had been alone, except for Vision. He was alone a lot these days, Pepper busy traveling for the business, or avoiding him, whichever the case may be. Rhodey frequently didn’t feel up to making the trek out of the city. The Avengers compound was often remarkably quiet, emptied of its occupants.    

As he has done for many nights before, he pours himself a glass of whiskey and wanders through the halls, trying not to think about You Know Who and their You Know What in the parking lot of You Know Where. Then Vision appears.    

“I feel something…quite odd.” He has his hand on his head, just over the stone. “I think something is coming.” Tiny sparks travel across Vision’s hands just as FRIDAY says, “Boss, we’ve got incoming.” He suits up and flies to the impact site.    

The grass is torn up, soil turning muddy in the damp weather. Unconscious, covered in blood, is Thor, laying flat on his back. Next to him, sits Loki, hands already on the back of his head in surrender.    

“Please, Stark,” He says and his voice is broken. “You have to help us.”  
   

“You _must listen_ ,” Loki cries. “Every moment we delay is another moment for the Titan to come closer, you must call the sorcerer-”    

“Stephen Strange is a neurosurgeon,” Tony shouts back. “He has nothing to do with any of this, as I’ve told you half a dozen times, and I don’t really appreciate being shouted at in my own house.”    

“Loki, calm yourself-”    

“Thor, you know what will happen if we do not act against Thanos and quickly.” Loki looks to Tony. “He has an army, he has a ship and weapons and devices of destruction and torment you cannot even possibly imagine-”    

“Yeah, I know, I saw it through the portal you opened to send in the Chitauri.”

Loki freezes at that. He leans forward abruptly, face very pale. “You’ve seen it then. Sanctuary.”    

“If that’s what you called that giant-ass black ship, then yeah.”

Loki grabs his arm. “If you’ve seen it, you should know.” His eyes are filling with tears. “You still will not believe me, though you’ve seen the evidence with your own eyes, as you’ve seen it on our bodies, why, _why_ will you not believe me?” Thor puts his hands on Loki’s waist then, drawing him away.    

“Brother, go to my room.” Loki releases a sob. “Go. I’ll be there in a moment. It’s okay.” Thor kisses his temple and sends him on his way. Tony feels the roll of revulsion he always does when he watches any sort of physical affection between his friend and his once enemy.    

“Thor, how am I supposed to believe him? This story is _bull_ -”    

“It is true, Stark, as I have been trying to explain to you for weeks. And I had told you, before, about the Infinity Stones, how odd it was that so many were appearing in such a short span of time-”    

“I know, Thor. But I need more than your word to convince the government that Loki is trustworthy.” Thor scrubs a hand over his face, looking very tired.    

“I am going to calm my brother. When I return, there is something we need to talk about.” When Thor is gone, Tony pulls up the footage from his bedroom. Loki paces back and forth, twisting his fingers together. When Thor enters, he stops his pacing and turns on Thor, pleading. They speak passionately for a while, arguing, then Thor lays a hand on Loki’s neck, cupping his jaw.    

Tony thinks about how _hard_ Loki’s grip had been on his arm. The edge of madness in his eyes. He thinks about other things, other dangers, and picks up the phone.  
   

Loki came remarkably quietly, and Tony hadn’t been willing to shoot a surrendering criminal, even if he was an alien. They handcuff him to a table in the interrogation room Tony had thought the architects foolish for putting into the compound in the first place. He’s glad for it now. Tony watches first, on the camera feed. Loki appears to be sleeping, his head resting on his arms.    

When Tony enters, he sits up, eyes wide.    

“Is Thor…?”    

“He’ll live. Pretty beat up though.” Loki rubs his cheek, the one with the rapidly healing burn, on his sleeve. “Want to tell me what happened? I thought you were supposed to be dead.”    

Loki starts talking and doesn’t stop until he’s spun the most ridiculous tale of an older sister, running into the gladiator Hulk in the asshole of the universe, Noah’s Ark, and being recaptured by the guy who had sent Loki in the first place.    

It’s complete bullshit.    

“When he wakes, Thor will confirm all I have said,” Loki finishes. “And I swear, I’m telling the truth this time.”    

“That is if Thor wakes up,” Tony says.

Loki freezes. “You-you said he would be fine.”    

“I said he would live.”    

“Let me see him. Please, Stark, I have a little magic left, I can heal him-”    

“You’re not going anywhere near him, horns, not anytime soon.”    

“ _Please_.”   

“No,” He says, and leaves Loki alone.  
   

He acquiesces of course, more due to Thor’s begging than Loki’s, and lets the brothers see each other. They’d kept Loki in a cell at first, kept him handcuffed even when they brought him to see Thor, but eventually, Tony approves of letting him out of restraints. Allows him out of the cell, gives him his own room with express orders not to leave the compound.    

Loki and Tony spend their time walking on eggshells around the other. Sometimes they collide and the results are usually cacophonous arguments. 

“Enough!” Thor explodes at the climax of the biggest. “Enough, Stark!”    

“ _Me?_ ” Tony takes a step back. “What about him?” But he sees the protective way Thor lays a hand on the small of Loki’s back, pulls him away from Tony, like he’s the threat.    

Another friend, choosing a criminal, a _murderer_ , over him. Over his trust. Over their team. Tony feels it sharp and painful, like a hot knife to the gut.  
   

When Thor returns from calming Loki down, he looks very serious. He sits down and is silent for a long while.    

Tony had almost forgotten that Thor was a king. He’d never really acted like it in the old days. But something about his stature, something about the way he looks at Tony with his one eye, feels very authoritative now. Tony feels like can do nothing else but wait for Thor to break the silence.   

“Tell me about what happened with Steve.”    

“It’s a long story.”   

“Start with the Accords, then.”    

“Shit, is that what this is about? You know, you and Steve are two peas in a fucking pod with this. You have to take responsibility for your actions.”    

“I understand that. What I fail to understand is why I should be held accountable by this…government body that I had no knowledge of, and has not been willing to negotiate with interested parties-”    

“We can negotiate after, we can work _with_ the Accords to create a more stable system. Actually protect people. You weren’t there, after Ultron. You left and didn’t see how fucked up we made an already fucked up country. People were suffering and dying, fucking starving in the streets because they suddenly didn’t have enough food. We did that. We _destroyed_ their lives.” Thor flinches at that. “It’s time you were responsible for them.”    

“I do understand. But what you are failing to grasp that I have other people who I am responsible for. I cannot-”    

“Who? Your fucking megalomaniac younger brother? Yeah you are responsible for that, so you’re responsible for his actions too, and for making sure-”    

“Not just Loki. My people are out there somewhere, what’s left of them, I have to provide them a home, a _safe_ home, and to do that I need to know what I’m getting into. What? Did you think I was just going to sign them without argument?”    

“117 other countries have, yes. They haven’t resisted what they understand is the _right thing to do_.”    

“That means some countries haven’t signed.”

Tony blinks. “Sure, but-”    

“Did you bother asking any of them why? From what I’ve been able to gather 117 is a majority, yes, but it’s not even close to a unanimous decision.”    

“From what you-”    

“Can you name any of the countries who didn’t sign? Did you read the dissenting opinion?”

Tony sputters. “Did you?”    

“Yes.” Thor rises, going to stand before the window. “When it became clear I could not expect full transparency from you about these Accords, I went back to Norway.”  
   

When Tony finally slips and mentions the Accords, Thor starts to research.    

Tony’s face had screwed up, he’d glanced down, and said “Yeah, Cap and I aren’t really talking right now…we’ll talk more about this when you’re better, point break,” and Thor had started to ask around. He gathered information about these ‘Sokovia Accords,’ as much as he can without the Accords themselves, finds some news articles about a fight in an airport, and the wanted posters for half the Avengers. He filtered through the news results, finds more about the debate, mention of a dissent argument from a lawyer named Astrid Iversen.    

He can’t access the actual Accords, or any of the other official documents. Tony’s got those pretty locked down, but he gathers some information and he’s ready to go.   

He hates to leave Loki but he had to know more. They were stranded on this planet and his allies were splintered. He doesn’t know who to trust anymore, so he lies to Tony about going to see Jane for a few days, orders Loki to stay in his room and to call him at least twice a day, then gets on a plane to Oslo.    

The air is cold but clean in the Norwegian capital. The seasons are just on the edge of changing, flurrying snowflakes falling on crisp orange leaves. Thor is waiting outside the government building, all glass and clean lines, when Loki makes one of his requisite calls.    

“Are you staying out of Stark’s way?”    

“I haven’t left my room, as you commanded, my king.” Loki only ever calls him that when he’s feeling particularly insubordinate. Thor smiles fondly. “I am getting abysmally bored. Have you found what you’re looking for yet?”   

“Almost. Soon. I have a flight back tonight, I’ll have found it by then.”    

“And then will you tell me what all of this is about?”

Thor smiles. “In good time, brother, in good time.” He sees her, crossing the square. Her hair is longer than the photograph, but it is the same straight brown hair, half pulled back from her face, clear blue eyes, and she is dressed almost the same, in a plain black suit and long wool coat. “I have to go. I’ll call you back.” He catches up to her just before she passes through security. “ _God morgen_ , Ms. Iversen.” She turns, and stops short.    

“Oh.” Her eyes go wide with surprise. “You’ve cut your hair. And lost an eye. Since I last saw you on television, that is. It’s been a while.”    

“I was wondering if I could speak with you.” She pauses.   

“Why me?”    

“I found mention of your work…on the Sokovia Accords.”   

“Right. Right.” She sounds a little faint. “Let me just…I’ll clear my schedule. Grab some things from my office. There’s a cafe around the corner. I’ll meet you there.”    

“Anything I can order you?”    

“Just a black coffee.”   

She is prompt, arriving at the cafe as soon as he’s gotten their drinks and found a table.    

“So this is weird,” She says. “I’m not sure I ever got used to the whole ‘the old gods are real and oops they’re actually aliens’ and now you’re sitting across from me in a cafe. Thor bought me coffee. Thor read my dissenting opinion.”    

“I haven’t actually read it. I haven’t managed to actually get a copy of the Accords, or your dissent.”   

“Right. I figured. That’s why I brought them.” She pulls them out of her briefcase. “I figure you can read Norwegian…which…we’re speaking Norwegian right now so that would make sense.” He smiles at her.    

“Yes, I read Norwegian very well, though my vocabulary might be a bit archaic.”   

“Right…” She sounds faint again.   

“I was joking. I apologize if I’ve made you uncomfortable, Ms. Iversen.”   

“I think you should probably call me Astrid.”    

“Sure. Astrid. I do apologize for springing this on you. I have reason to believe that the people I’m staying with are intentionally keeping me in the dark about these Accords, and I wish to hear your perspective on the matter. What led you to write the dissent, how you convinced Norway not to sign, that sort of thing.”    

“Yes. You’ll understand more when you read them, I’m sure, but I can give you the main points of the dissent. To start off, I disliked the command structure of the body that would control the Avengers. It was too top heavy, not enough room for additional voices on the committee. It became clear that the Avengers could easily be used as a tool for the most powerful countries, essentially bound to the will of the United States and its strongest allies. I believe that was Steve Rogers’ main complaint as well. That organizations have agendas and they were not being particularly transparent about their intentions. From the recorded debates, he supports the idea that power is best left in the Avengers’ own hands, rather than surrendered to a government body that could easily be infected by HYDRA, for example. Or a government body that could choose to use the Avengers for immoral aims. I agreed with Tony Stark that there needed to be some form of accountability, but the system outlined in the Accords was far too corruptible.   

“The main issue I had was with the dehumanizing language and the lack of transparency over punishments for transgressions. That’s what convinced the Storting that we shouldn’t sign this document. They refer to ‘Enhanced Individuals’ as if they were not citizens with their own rights. Anecdotally, several times Secretary Ross was overheard referring to Wanda Maximoff as a ‘weapon of mass destruction,’ and you and Dr. Banner as ‘nuclear warheads.’ Like, ‘I would be in trouble if I lost two nuclear warheads,’ like the Avengers lost you. That’s mostly gossip though, amongst the aids and lawyers. I can’t say for sure if it is true.”

Thor raises an eyebrow. “As if we were things to be lost, rather than people with our own things to do.”   

“Exactly.” She flips a page in her dissent. “The other major concern was ‘the Raft,’ whatever that is. Well. I mean we know what it is, roughly. It’s where they proposed keeping ‘Enhanced Individuals’ that did not agree to their terms, or stepped out of bounds. They kept referring to it as a ‘secure facility’ but wouldn’t let anyone in to examine it. We were very concerned about the conditions there, especially since there was no additional oversight. It was clearly a prison and their secrecy was disturbing.   

“I also tried to make sure there were appropriate protections on Section 14.3 ‘Studies and Trials.’ The wording in that section seems deliberately vague and they don’t set up any sort of connection to an appropriate medical ethics organization.” Thor flips through the Accords. “That’s my original copy, so you’ll see my notes in the margins. I worked in medical ethics before I started working for the Norwegian government, so I was particularly passionate about that clause. There are a dozen more legal reasons the Accords were invalid, in flagrant violation of international law and human rights, like forcing people to wear tracking devices, indefinite detention without legal representation or trial, but you can read about those in my notes. I’m sure you have questions.”    

“Hm. Many. Probably few that you can answer. Unless you know where Steve Rogers is.”    

“I do not. I can try and put out some feelers…see if he’ll respond. He’ll know that Norway didn’t sign the Accords, so I think I could get him to at least open a line of communication. He won’t be as suspicious as if it were coming from a country that did sign.”   

“Do you know of anyone who has seen this Raft?”    

“None have come forward.”    

“And did they allow for negotiations?”    

“There were some, behind closed doors. Once this document was created, it strongly seemed like they were unwilling to amend it. Every meeting I was in we argued in circles, and at the end it was a resolution to change nothing. They were deliberately spinning us in circles, like they already had their answer and they were just trying convince us of the right way.”    

“And how did you resist this convincing? What made the others sign?”   

“That’s a complicated question. I think there are many countries who were ideologically very pro-Accords, for various reasons. Then there are many who may have been concerned with the implications, but had too many economic ties or political concerns to say no. Or they thought we might have room to amend after they were signed, negotiate a better position once the Accords were confirmed. I disagreed with that sentiment. I think once the ink was dry on the page the Security Council would be in control and they would shut the rest of us out completely.” She takes a sip of her drink. “May I ask you some questions?”    

“Of course, Astrid.”    

“I have a lot.”    

“That’s okay.”

She takes a deep breath. “Some are going to be off topic.”    

“My flight back isn’t until tonight.”    

“Where to start?” She wraps her fingers around a mug. “Where are you staying right now?”   

“The Avengers compound, in upstate New York. With Tony Stark.”    

“Ah, I guess that explains why you haven’t been provided the Accords. How did you get here? Why are you not on Asgard?”    

“Asgard is gone.” It doesn’t sting to say it quite as much as it used to.    

“Gone?”    

“Yes. Ragnarök came and destroyed everything. There were survivors, we intended to rebuild but, well. I was recently separated from them, ended up back here, and I’m not sure what became of them.”

Astrid sits back in her chair. “I thought you were supposed to die in Ragnarök,” She says after a moment.   

“Was I?”    

“That’s what the stories said. All the old gods gone, so the cycle can start anew.”    

“Well, most of them are gone, including Odin, so…”    

“So that makes you…that makes you the king of Asgard.”    

“…yes?” Astrid blinks.   

“I’m just feeling like…like I probably shouldn’t be meeting with the king of Asgard in a cafe. I probably shouldn’t have made the king of Asgard buy me coffee.” Thor extends a placating hand and an easy smile.    

“It’s really fine. I haven’t been feeling quite like a king lately. You have other questions?”    

“There’s one I couldn’t stop thinking about once I knew, about all this.” Astrid gestures in his general direction. She takes a deep breath. “Why did you just leave the Tesseract here? Odin just brought it here and left it and…and the Nazis slaughtered all of Tønsberg to get to it. There was just an old man left to protect it. Why wouldn’t he tell us what it was, how dangerous it was? We could have protected it better, hidden it better. In the two weeks after the Nazis first began the invasion, we moved the entire government, the royal family, thousands of sensitive documents and artifacts from the capital. We could have gone for the Tesseract too, but we didn’t know.” Thor feels very tired all of a sudden. He sighs.   

“I don’t know. Honestly, the older I get, the more I learn…the less I understand some of my father’s decisions. Why he just abandoned the Tesseract here, when he knew what it was…that’s one of them.”    

“At least the gods have the same feelings of growing up and being disappointed by their parents as us mortals.”    

They stayed in the coffeeshop until the early afternoon, going over some of the myths and the Accords, and various other things that had happened while he was gone. She leaves to go back to work, giving him her card with her email address and a promise to answer the phone if he calls.    

“If you ever need a lawyer,” She winks.    

Thor sits on a bench by the harbor and reads the Accords until he has to leave for the airport. He returns to the Avengers compound, makes something up about Jane for Tony, and keeps reading.    

He’s not sure he likes the look of these Accords.  
   

“You went behind my back. You couldn’t have just asked me?”    

“Tony, I did! I asked you half a dozen times and you kept avoiding the conversation.”   

“You were recovering-”    

“You didn’t want to have discuss this, you didn’t want to face the truth of what you had done.”

Tony starts to pace. “What I had done? What _I_ had done? I’m not the one who betrayed us, no, that was Steve. And now you. I’m not the one who threw away the team, threw away our ideals to side with murderers.”    

“You know it’s more complicated than that-”    

“Is it? Do you know what Steve did? His friend, the one he’d known since before the war, became a HYDRA assassin. He killed my mom. And Steve knew and he lied to my face because he didn’t want to face the consequences.”    

“Tony, I’m sorry. I understand that pain, you know I do, I understand the desire for revenge-”   

“And after all that shit. What was I supposed to do? Just…just let us keep running wild, keep fucking up the world in our crazed attempts to do good. I could see us for what we really were - dangerous. We’re a danger to the people we’re trying to protect. We’re mon-”   

“Don’t. Don’t say that, we are not monsters.”    

“We’re the boogeyman. People are afraid of us, and they’re right to be. Wanda has a bad day, and she can level a fucking city. She can kill people, with barely a thought.”   

“That’s not her fault, Stark.”    

“Well it’s sure as hell not the fault of all the aid workers she killed in Nigeria.”    

“I understand where you’re coming from-”    

“And how do we know that she’s not going to get her little world destroying impulse back? How do we know that Barnes won’t go back to killing, how do we know that Loki isn’t _fucking_ with your _head_? They need to be watched, they need to be put in their places to protect-”   

“Loki is _not_ in my head! And how do we know that the people ‘watching’ us won’t make all of this worse?” Thor shakes his head. “This isn’t helpful. I just want to be included in these negotiations. I want to be informed, I want to be treated with the respect I deserve, as a king-”    

“There is no negotiation with this, point break, you just get to decide whether you’re going to sign the Accords and get in line, or retire.”   

“Retire?” Thor laughs. “What do you imagine that to look like? Binding our powers and shipping us off to some safehouse in the middle of nowhere? Tracking us, monitoring us? That’s not how it works.”    

“We can now, you know. Bind people’s powers. It was completely absurd when they proposed it but once I got a look at what HYDRA had been doing in that base, I managed to figure it out. Used technology to beat magic. What a world. Maybe once we cut off your brother’s magic, whatever…spell or whatever will be lifted and you’ll see how ridiculous you’re being, under his thrall-”    

“You will not touch him!” Thor shouts. “You will leave him alone, and we will discuss what terms I am amendable to.”    

“Well, it’s too late for that,” Tony shouts back. “I won’t put up with this anymore. It’s too late.”

Thor steps back. “Too late? Stark, what have you done?”    

“You know, I used to be just like you, you and Steve. Thought I knew better than everyone, thought that the government would never get their grubby little hands on my tech. And where did that get me? I made a weapon…worse than anything Stark Industries had ever done. A lot of people died. A lot of lives got ruined.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “You have to be held _accountable_ , Thor, just like the rest of us. And if you won’t do it willingly, you’ll need to be controlled.” The color drains from Thor’s face.    

“No. I am not a _thing_ to be controlled, Stark.” Lightning sparks at his fingertips, traveling up and down his arms. “I won’t let you do this.”    

“You don’t have a choice, buddy. The calvary’s on the way.” Tony readies the suit from the control tucked into a pocket. He activates it and the metal closes over him, just at the moment when the lightning strikes.    

 _Bad move_ , he thinks as he hits the ground hard.    

“Boss, we’ve lost power in the surge,” FRIDAY says.    

“Reboot it.”   

“Reboot in thirty seconds.”    

Thor is already long gone when the suit reboots. Tony just hopes he is fast enough to stop another friend from doing something he can’t take back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey girl, I heard you like non-linear narrative so I put some non-linear narrative on your non-linear narrative. Time is a social construct. 
> 
> Who’s being betrayed here? Answer: everyone.
> 
> This is also probably the least whump-y and most plot-y of all of them. Whoops.
> 
> I was so nervous to post this, since it had the most plot elements and I wanted to make sure I was balancing everyone's perspectives and making it reasonable that Thor would choose to reject the Accords. I was so nervous I went back this weekend and rewatched both Iron Man and Iron Man 2 and just want to make it clear that I love Tony Stark...I just also think the Sokovia Accords had a lot of potential for abuse. But I also see and understand why he did support them...he's talking about accountability all the way back in the first Iron Man. 
> 
> Thor, here, I think is hesitating on accepting the Accords from his perspective as a head of state, for a place that's been a pretty absolutist monarchy, rather than as an Avenger. He’s a king, he has to consider his people first and becomes uncomfortable with how little information he’s being given. Tony’s treating him like he always has, like one of the Avengers who needs accountability and Thor is like ‘no you don’t understand I am the accountability.’ Anyways. If you disagree with me about the Accords that’s fine, I think there really wasn’t any perfectly right answer in Civil War and there’s not one here. Like I said, literally everyone is being betrayed here.
> 
> Notes on Norway: So, according to Civil War and the Marvel wiki that I desperately read last night to make sure I was being somewhat accurate, 117 countries ratified the Accords, but that leaves around 70-75 member states who either voted against or abstained. Who were these countries and why didn't they ratify? I decided to head-canon that Norway didn’t sign because of the possibility for human rights abuses, as Astrid explains. Also, I thought I would give the Odinsons a bit of a break. Like, a glimmer of hope that their plan to resettle Asgard in Norway might not be completely trashed. 
> 
> Astrid probably shouldn't have been that surprised that the Nazis would destroy an entire town because apparently the Nazis just kind of...Did That sometimes. (I've done a lot of research on WWII in Scandinavia for my Real Life Research and let me tell you...Nazi Scandinavia policy was a Hot Mess.) But I did want them to have a conversation that was just like 'Soooo you guys came down here and lost this super dangerous thing and then just like never came down to check on us again??????' I stretched what they were able to do during the brief conventional resistance that lasted from April 9 to June 10, 1940. They were indeed able to evacuate the king and government, which went to London to join the group of governments-in-exile there, but I have no idea if they moved like...sensitive documents or artifacts or whatever. I threw that in to open up the question of 'what other secrets could the Norwegian government have been hiding?' which maybe could open up some fun mythology based plotlines later. (I am, and will always be, a sucker for bringing mythology in where it doesn't belong. Just like I'm a sucker for platonic bed sharing. Mmm.) 
> 
> I'm going to Stop Talking now. Clearly I was nervous about this chapter because I only really make outdated meme jokes and ramble on about history when I'm trying to cover up insecurities. (That's a lie - My meme jokes are never on trend. I will ramble on about history any time. I only do extensive research and practically footnote fanfiction when I'm feeling insecure.) I am NOT feeling insecure for tomorrow! I'm actually most excited to post tomorrow's chapter. It's 'the one that got away from me': 8k+ words, a return to more typical whump, misuse of magic, and Bruce Banner being heroic. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com
> 
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	7. Kidnapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Revengers. The Ark. Warnings: rape as metaphor (it's not quite 'mind rape' but it's a similar type of violation that another character refers to as rape), brief mentions of child death, murder. 
> 
> Bruce wakes up alone. Things are not as rosy as they seem on this prosperous planet.

   

It’s dawn. Bruce isn’t used to waking up to dawn. But they’re on-planet now, not reliant on the artificial cycles of the ship. The sun breaks through the porthole windows, dragging Bruce from sleep with a groan. Adjusting to different planet schedules was worse than any jet lag Bruce had ever experienced, and that’s including when he ran off to India and took four planes to get from California to Mumbai. The Asgardians didn’t seem to be as affected as him, but they didn’t seem to be affected by much.    

He wondered how they were feeling after last night. Thor, Loki, and the Valkyrie had gone off to the royal palace of this planet, and that usually led to some kind of raucous feasting and drinking. He’d gone to bed pretty late and they hadn’t been home, so it must have been a wild night. He must have really been out cold, to have missed them coming in completely.    

He opens his eyes to empty beds.    

He’s not used to waking up alone either.  
   

He dresses quickly, surprise quickly growing into worry. Thor had never spent the night away from the ship before. Valkyrie and Loki had, on occasion, but they had always informed them beforehand. They didn’t just stay out all night.    

He finds Heimdall standing at the hatch, looking out with an inscrutable expression on his face.    

“They have not returned,” The Watcher says in his grave, deep voice.    

“Yeah, I noticed. And they didn’t radio?”   

“No, I have received no communications from them. And I cannot see them.”    

“You can’t…is that…is that normal?”    

“No, it is not.” He sighs. “Loki possesses the skill to hide himself from me, and he could hide the others as well, but it does not seem likely.”   

“You don’t think Loki’s…”    

“No. Perhaps, at an earlier time, I would have suspected him. But there is no motivation here for him to betray us now.”    

“And the-”   

“The Tesseract remains in its case. He would not have left without it. No, something else is going on here. And something that could hide them from me…”   

“Yeah. That’s not good.”  
   

Even less good is Bruce an hour later, finding himself trudging through the woods towards the castle, on his way to rescue his friends. Alone.   

The decision was a logical one. The Asgardian citizens on the Ark could not be risked and most lacked the necessary skills for a mission of this sort. They were farmers, craftsmen, children and old people, those who had been spared Hela’s wrath. Heimdall was a symbol of authority; thus, he had to remain with the people. The Sakaarans had all taken off to the gambling halls the night before and were not expected to return until their scheduled departure date, the day after tomorrow.    

So Bruce trekked alone, with the hope he would find them quickly. And he had the Hulk for backup anyways.    

This planet had reminded him a bit of central Europe. It was thickly forested. The castle, as seen from the ship, was a towering stone fortress, adorned by flags and pennants. Bruce had explored the market a bit the day before and it had been overflowing with goods. The people seem generally happy, prosperous. There was little poverty, a stark difference from the many poor and crumbling planets they’d visited along their journey. It seems like a nice place. But if something had delayed his friends, that meant there was something not-so-nice lurking under the surface.    

When he reaches the castle, he’s stop by guards.    

“What business do you have with the Queen Amira?”   

“Um, I’m just a traveller,” Bruce says. “An explorer and ah, scientist. Passing through. I wanted to pay my respects to the queen, I’ve heard she is very wise and ah, welcoming.” Oddly enough, that gets him in. They are either truly welcoming or else, very secure that they’re the boogeymen of this story.   

He’s shown through the castle and finally to a huge set of double wooden doors by the guards, who incline their heads and gesture for him to enter.    

“Presenting Bruce Banner, of Terra,” One of the guards announces as he enters the hall. It’s crowded, by people dressed in flowing silk dresses and heavily made up, who look at him with curiosity. And maybe some scorn. He’s never felt so underdressed in his entire life.    

“From Terra? How wonderful!” Queen Amira sits on a raised dais, perched on a heavily carved wooden throne. Her dress, bright scarlet and embroidered with birds so realistic they could take off at any moment, flows from her throne down to the first steps. She is very beautiful, with shining dark hair and smooth skin. Her eyes are bright green and her lips are full and painted red. She smiles down at Bruce. “We never receive visitors from Terra, since so few of you make it to our corner of the galaxy. I simply cannot wait to hear of your travels and how you made it to our court.”    

“Of course, your majesty,” He says with an awkward bow. “You’re right, most of us…Terrans…don’t make it far from our planet. It’s a long story, but the short of it is, I’ve been traveling with a group of Asgardians.” The expression on her face barely falters, but Bruce catches it. “I believe some of my friends may have passed through last night.”    

“My, my, a Terran traveling with the King of Asgard himself. That is a mighty impressive friendship.”   

“Well…yeah, Thor - _King_ Thor and I go way back.”   

“They did indeed come before me last night. I received the king and his brother, along with their guard. They stayed for the early meal but departed before the real feasting began, unfortunately.”    

“Oh, okay. Too bad, I was hoping to catch them on my way back to the ship, guess I missed them.”   

“Yes.” The queen smiles tightly. “You’ll stay for dinner of course? And you’re welcome to explore the grounds, we have a wonderful museum of this planet’s flora and fauna on display, just next to the gardens.”   

“Sounds lovely, your majesty, thanks for your hospitality.”    

“I will see you later, I’m sure.” She gestures and they show him the way out. The next supplicant is already entering the hall and being announced.    

Bruce does go to the museum, and the gardens. He also talks to people, feints interest in the culture and landscape to get more information from the locals. (If he’s playacting a little, pretending to be a Hardy boy, well, he’s the only one who has to know anything about it.)    

He learns several interesting things.    

Most importantly: the three Asgardians had certainly stayed for the feasting.    

“Oh, the king, of course I remember him,” A garden attendant blushes as she recalls flirting with Thor. “I served him a glass of wine at the start of the evening festivities and he was very…friendly. I thought…well, I thought he intended for me to find him later in the evening, but when I looked, he was gone. I confess I was disappointed. I assumed he found someone more entertaining.” Bruce reassures her, compliments her flowers and moves on.    

Several of the guards vividly remember drinking with the Valkyrie.    

“She downed an entire bottle of molten whiskey,” One of them says with wide, impressed eyes. “Remember her? In one gulp, without stopping for air, remember?”   

“Aye, I remember,” His companion says, taking a bite out of an apple. “She drank half the guardsmen under the table, barely wavered.”    

“I would marry her, if I wasn’t already betrothed to the miller’s daughter,” The younger of the two sighs.    

“Marry her? She would eat you alive before the ceremony was over! And plus, Valkyries aren’t allowed to get married, are they?” Bruce frankly has no idea, so he just mutters something about rules being flexible and hurries away.    

An older woman remembers talking to Loki.    

“He was very polite, the prince was,” She says as she peels potatoes. Bruce offers to assist and takes up the extra knife. “Thank you, dear. Yes, the prince was a very polite young man. Quiet. He seemed nervous, but then again sorcerers are often nervous here.”    

“Why is that?”    

“Because of the queen’s power, of course! She’s a powerful sorceress herself, some say the most powerful in this quadrant. But Loki of Asgard is also very well regarded in magical circles, I confess I was surprised to see him so disturbed. It gave some of the younger mages great pride in their queen. They were gathered in a cluster, clearly gossiping. The prince saw them and seemed put off by whatever they were saying. I couldn’t hear, can’t hear as well as I used to, you know. Ah. I was so embarrassed at their conduct. They never teach these young mages any manners nowadays, they just let them run wild and grow prideful in their powers. When I was young, any magical practitioner was deserving of respect, no matter how much you believed our magics were superior.” She huffs. “The prince stayed close to the king after that. I believe they left early, as I didn’t see them when I was cleaning up. You’ll apologize to the prince, won’t you? For the young ones’ behavior? Such a polite young man.” Bruce finishes his pile of potatoes quickly and leaves her so he doesn’t have to hear the disturbing words “polite young man” in reference to Loki ever again.    

The mystery deepens. The revelation that the queen is a sorceress makes Bruce _extremely_ nervous. He swallows down his nerves and keeps poking around.    

A librarian gives him a little bit more information about the queen’s magic.    

“She’s the most powerful witch in this galaxy,” She says. “It’s how she came to rule on her own after her husband died. It’s not usual to have sole rulers here, there is always two, or three, to share the burden of the throne. She has her followers, her advisors, of course, but she always makes decisions on her own, always does the most powerful spells on her own.”    

It seems she has more followers than the librarian implied. There is almost a cult of worship surrounding her. She is near universally adored, especially by the mages in the court. Bruce gets a demonstration of her magic around lunchtime, in the gardens. There’s a patch of roses that have died off, and on a tour of the gardens the queen pauses. Bruce is eating, an apple the old woman had spared him from the kitchens, and watches from a distance.    

The queen listens to an apologetic gardener, who clasps his hands in supplication. She smiles and raises her hands. Light, a faint, pale green, flows through her, through her hands and into the ground. It surges through the roses and they are left plump and red. The courtiers surrounding her applaud politely, exchanging impressed titters as she bows theatrically.    

“New look for her majesty,” One lady whispers to her neighbor.    

“It’s a good look for her,” He responds. “I like it.”    

“Let’s see how long it lasts, hopefully longer than the last one.” Bruce stops listening. Fashion had never really interested him.  
   

He finds the Valkyrie almost 100% by accident.    

He continues to follow the logic that the service staff always has the most knowledge about the workings of any institution, he heads to the stables after the magical display in the garden. Maybe someone remembers the Asgardians leaving, if maybe they had a mechanical failure on the escape pod they’d rigged into an on-planet transport and borrow horses, then got lost. (It was possible. Bruce hadn’t been quite certain what those odd symbols meant when he ignored them and soldered two wires together to install the steering column.)    

The stables are abandoned when he arrives. But then he hears snoring. A very familiar snoring.    

“Hey! Val!” He calls, following the sound. “Where are you?” A groan. He finds her lying facedown in a stall, on top of a bed of straw. He unbolts the door and rushes inside. “What have they done to you?”   

“What have who done to me?” She rolls over, the empty bottle falling from her fingers. “Oh, my head hurts. This planet’s got some good stuff, I’ll have to sneak some back to the ship before we leave.”    

“Val, what happened?”    

“Huh? Bruce, wait, you weren’t there last night, were you?” She rubs her forehead. “Man, I got drunk. Last thing I remember is the rules to a very interesting card game I’ll have to teach Loki, he’ll cheat but that’s the whole point, should be fun…”   

“Val, focus! _Where_ is Loki? And Thor?”    

“What do you mean where are they?” Her eyes are starting to clear but her forehead is still creased in confusion.    

“You didn’t come back last night, none of you. I came to find you and the queen lied and said you’d all left early, but there’s been no sign of-”   

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, _shit_.” She unsteadily gets to her feet. “I lost the princes, I can’t _believe_ I lost the princes. If this had been the old Asgard, I’d literally get my head cut off, did you know that? I’d literally-”   

“Okay, yes, head cut off, _focus_. We have to find them.”    

“No shit. Water, do you have water?”    

“No, but I’m sure-” She’s already stumbling from the stall, dunking her head in a bucket of water by the front doors. “Kay. What else do you remember?”    

“It was just a party. The negotiations had gone well, we didn’t have anything to worry about, I kept an eye on Thor, Loki was hanging pretty close by, but then I started drinking with the guards. And drinking. There was a card game, you had to drink every time someone called your bluff and I just kept having the shittiest hands.”   

“Do you think they rigged it? To get you wasted on purpose?”   

“Well that sure seems likely now,” She shouts. “We have to find them and get the fuck off this planet.”    

Bruce fills her in on what he’s found out so far.    

“Okay, you said the old kitchen maid said there was a group of mages, and Loki had some sort of confrontation with them?”   

“Not exactly, she seemed to say they were gossiping and he overheard and got nervous. She said that’s when he started sticking close to Thor.” Bruce says. “She also kept calling him a ‘polite young man’ which was very weird…”    

“Okay, let’s find the mages. Maybe they’ll know something.”   

They find the young group loitering outside the main hall. The group ranges from teenagers, to mid-20 year olds, in Bruce’s approximation.    

“We shouldn’t,” The smallest says. “We’ll get in trouble.”   

“Don’t be a baby.”    

“Yeah, come on Tristan, we’ll just take a peak.” One of the older ones puts an arm around his shoulders. “And you don’t have to be afraid of him, he won’t be able to hurt us.”   

Valkyrie raises an eyebrow and inclines her head towards them. They trail the group of young mages as they slip through a door next to the hall that opens onto a staircase. They wind deeper into the castle, chatting amongst themselves. Valkyrie makes a sharp gesture when Bruce trips on a rock, but the youths never hear them. They enter through a stone door. The Valkyrie pulls Bruce behind a stack of chests and motions him to silence. They watch, and wait, and a few minutes later they emerge.    

“You’re going to get us all in trouble. If the queen finds out-” The smallest one wrings his hands, glancing behind them at the door swinging shut.    

“Relax, it’s not as if we _took_ any of it. Just…tested it,” A tall girl says. “Stop worrying so much.” Their voices fade as they climb the stairs. Their words had made no sense to Bruce, but he doesn’t have time to question it because the Valkyrie’s already moving. The stone door surprisingly has no sort of locking mechanism on it and opens easily under her hand.    

The room is a mirror image of the hall above them, but all in stone. Deep trenches are cut into the floor. Odd, symbolic tapestries line the walls. In the center, on the stone dais, sits a throne.    

Loki is draped over it, unconscious and ghost white.    

“Shit,” The Valkyrie hisses. They rush forward, climbing the dais. “He’s breathing.” It’s shallow, but Bruce can see the faint rise and fall of his chest.   

“What did they do?”    

“I don’t know, has to be something magical, right?” She touches his face, lifts his head from where it rests awkwardly on the arm of the chair. “Come on, highness, wake up, we don’t have time for a nap right now. Time to go.” His face twitches once, but he has no more response to her words, or her gentle tapping of his cheek. “ _Shit_ , lackey, I swear-”   

“Shouldn’t we just take him and leave? We can figure out how to wake him up when we are out of this creepy room, right?” There’s a hum of energy permeating the place and it’s starting to make Bruce feel nauseous.    

“You’re right. We’re going to have to find Thor fast though. Whatever they’ve done to him, whatever they wanted him for, someone’s going to notice pretty quickly that he’s gone.” The Valkyrie lifts Loki’s limp body, tossing him over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”    

They make it about five feet from the dais. Bruce is a little ahead when he hears a heavy thud and the Valkyrie’s curse. He turns. “What, did you just _drop_ him?” He asks, when he sees Loki sprawled out on the floor, the Valkyrie bent over him.    

“Something stopped me.”   

“What are you- Nothing’s here! What could have stopped you?”    

“ _Fucking_ magic.” She slides her hands under his armpits and starts to drag. There’s some kind of invisible barrier that she can’t cross, no matter how hard she pulls. She drops Loki again. “ _Fuck_!”    

“What do we do?” She thinks for a minute.    

“I think we have to leave him here.”    

“Leave him, in this creepy-ass throne room?” Bruce says. She looks at him with a deadly serious expression on her face. “What do you think they’re going to do with him?”    

“I have no idea, but I don’t see any other solutions. I don’t have any magic, you _definitely_ don’t have any magic. We can’t undo this spell.” She lifts Loki’s limp body again, carrying him back to the throne. She places him on it, trying to arrange his limbs in a way that’s looks reminiscent of how they found him, but at least a little more comfortable. “We’ll try and find Thor first, then confront the queen.”   

“Thor’s not going to be happy when he finds out we left him passed out here.” Something about this just looks _wrong_. Bruce finds himself feeling sorry for Loki. He’s still entirely unconscious, but the expression on his face looks somehow pained, miserable. He is very, very pale.    

“If we can’t find Thor in an hour, we’ll come back here and check on him, okay?” She touches Loki’s hair in a moment of uncharacteristic softness. “I don’t feel any better about this than you do. But we’re out of ideas. We have to find Thor.” They reluctantly turn and leave the odd throne room. Bruce spares one last glance back at Loki before the door shuts on him.    

“How are we even going to find Thor?”

She shrugs. “Every castle has a dungeon.”  
   

It doesn’t take long. The Valkyrie has been in enough castles and fortresses, she manages to logic their way to what appears to be a dungeon. And then they can follow the sound.    

Not snoring this time, but furious, constant shouting.    

“If you do not let me out of here, I will _break_ my way out and tear every single person-” The door squeaks as the Valkyrie wrenches it open and interrupts Thor’s monologue. He very helpfully pounds on the door, revealing precisely which cell he was hidden in. Thor is making this very easy for them.“Finally, someone appears. Let me out, I am a king-”   

“No shit, majesty,” The Valkyrie says. “We’re here to rescue you.”   

“Valkyrie! Thank the Norns, you have Loki with you?”    

“Er, not quite,” Bruce says.    

“Banner! What are you doing here?”    

“Heimdall sent me when you guys didn’t come back and he couldn’t see you.”

The Valkyrie is examining the lock. “Fairly primitive,” She mutters. “I think I can-”    

“I got it,” Bruce says. He slips a few things he’d swiped from the kitchen. Long, narrow blades and a knife sharpener.    

“Well, I’m impressed. Seven PhDs _and_ you can pick locks? Midgard seems an interesting place.” The cell door swings open. Thor steps out, looking tired and angry but unharmed.    

“I used to forget my keys a bunch, so I first learned how to bust into cars, then use my credit cards to get into my dorm. Natasha taught me a bunch of different locks, for fun. Thor, what _happened_?”    

“The queen is not what she says she is.”  
   

The negotiations had gone better than expected. Queen Amira was welcoming and sympathetic to their plight. She offers them fuel cells at an insanely reasonable price and contacts with a few other planets who may be able to help them. She even gives Loki privileged access to her library of magical texts, something that Thor would think would delight his brother. Loki politely thanks her, but Thor can read tension in the lines of his body.    

“What is it?” He asks before they separate, Loki to the library, Thor and the Valkyrie to the training yards. Loki shakes his head tightly.    

“I don’t know. I just…something feels off.”    

“Loki, this is the best planet we’ve been to in two months. You’re just being paranoid, you’re too used to the crime families and the tyrants. Don’t do this to yourself.” Loki just purses his lips and goes off to the library.    

The next time Thor sees Loki, he’s even more agitated.    

“You don’t know how to take good things at face value,” He accuses. “You’re trying to ruin this-”

Loki grabs his arm. “Thor, something just feels wrong. I’m not trying to ruin anything, but-”   

“Stop. You need to relax. We’ll talk about this on the ship.”    

The dinner continues without incident. Loki, instead of sulking away from him like he usually does, does not stray far from his side. He’s not talking to Thor, but he’s not leaving either. As the night turns from dinner to a true party, he grasps Thor’s arm again.    

“Thor, I don’t care if you believe me or not, just…just be careful tonight. I still think something is wrong.” Loki looks genuinely afraid, the anxiety naked on his face. Thor feels himself give in, surrendering to his instincts as an older brother. He twists his arm out of Loki’s grip and cups his neck, brushing his thumb over his jaw.   

“Loki, relax. It’s okay. We’ll just have a few drinks for politeness’ sake, then we’ll go back to the ship. And I’ll be careful. I promise.” Loki still looks uncertain but he nods. He steps backwards out of Thor’s grip, and knocks into an older woman carrying a basket of fruit. The mask of the prince is back on his face in an instant.    

“My apologies, ma’am, let me help you with that.”    

“Your majesty,” A young blonde woman says. “Would you like a drink?” Thor gives her a warm smile.    

“But of course, especially if it is served by you. Your hospitality has been very refreshing…”    

He flirts with the waitress for a while, then chats with the guards. A while later, Loki finds him again. His hands are twisting together in a familiar anxious gesture that reminds Thor achingly of their mother.   

“Thor, please, I think we should leave.”

Thor is well on his way to being drunk, and grows annoyed at Loki’s theatrics. “Loki, I’m losing patience, this is the third time-”   

“Brother, I don’t care, I don’t care if you’re angry at me for this, but please, I feel like something’s truly wrong here and I think we should leave.” Loki’s hands are shaking. “I don’t think the Queen can be trusted.” He says in a whisper.    

“Loki, you would return her hospitality with-”

Loki huffs. “I understand the protocols well, brother, just as you do. Better, probably. But if this means our lives-”   

“Don’t be dramatic.”   

“Brother, please, if you would just listen! I’m trying to tell you that I feel that something is wrong, that I don’t feel safe, and you promised three months ago-”

Thor sighs. He grasps his brother’s shoulder. “Aye, I did promise. If you do not feel safe, I will keep that promise. We will find the Valkyrie and make our excuses.” Loki visibly relaxes.    

“Thank you.”    

But they can’t find the Valkyrie.    

Ten minutes later, Thor curses. They well and truly cannot find her, and Loki is on the verge of panic.    

“Where could she have gone?” Thor groans in frustration.    

“Or who could have taken her?”

Thor gently takes Loki’s arm, squeezing in reassurance. “She’s probably just raiding their wine cellar. Come, we’ll find her and then-”   

“Are you going somewhere?” Thor whirls, sweeping Loki behind him in one smooth motion. It’s the queen, smiling sweetly at him.    

“We were looking for the Valkyrie. We noticed that she was missing from the party and wanted to make sure she was alright.”    

“Why would she be anything but? This is a safe planet, we have no violent crimes here. You’re not planning on leaving early, are you? But the night has just begun!”

Thor smiles. “Of course, we just wanted to check on our friend, get a little air before the party really got in swing.”

The queen smiles. “The throne room is empty now. I confess, sometimes I slip away to take a quiet moment there myself sometimes. Parties can be overwhelming, especially when one has been aboard a refugee ship without such entertainments for months. Won’t you join me?” She gestures towards the door.    

“Thor, wait,” Loki hisses, but Thor ignores him. He drags his younger brother reluctantly forward.    

The second he’s through the door, it feels like a blanket had been thrown over him, smothering a fire within him. A strangled gasp from Loki tells him his brother has been subjected to something similar. The door slams shut behind them.    

Three mages stand around the throne as the queen approaches it. She turns and smiles at them.    

“Come on, come forward, dears.”    

“What is this?” Thor growls. “What have you done to us?”    

“Just a few dampening spells my associates here cooked up. Come forward.”   

“Do it.” A guard by the door says. Thor grits his teeth and complies. The queen sits on the throne with the brothers before her, much as they had been during the negotiations.    

“Brother, if we get out of this…” Loki whispers furiously.   

“Yes, yes, you’re going to kill me, I’m going to owe you, I understand.” Thor’s hand closes around Loki’s wrist. “Ready?” Loki slips a knife into his palm.    

“Now.” The brothers move to attack but it’s no use. The magic, suppressing theirs presses down and the queen raises her hand. The knives bend down to the floor, dragging them with them.    

“Nice try, your highnesses,” The queen says, her light purple magic sparking at her fingertips. But the magic falters, and a frustrated expression crosses her face. Thor nearly breaks free and he sees a spark of green light from his brother, before the other mages take over and their magics are stuffed down again. The knives turn red hot and bend towards the floor, dropping from their hands. “You should not fear, highnesses. Your lives will be going to a greater cause.” Loki inhales sharply. Thor glances at him and his eyes are wide and panicked.    

“It’s going to be okay,” Thor whispers. Loki manages to gather enough anger to glare at him. Thor turns back to the queen. “What greater cause do you speak of, your majesty? If we are giving our lives to it, I would prefer knowing.”    

“You’ll be contributing to the stability and prosperity of this land.”   

“We’ll be going to your own power you mean,” Loki snarls. “If you intend to do what I suspect and steal our magic for your own.”    

“Why, how clever. You live up to your reputation, what a rare thing these days. You are correct, of course. It’s true, it’s your magic I’ll need. But that’s how I keep my planet safe, how I keep us prosperous.”

Loki struggles against the magic binding him. “You thieving whore!” He snarls. “You are lower than a worm, a sorceress who steals power from others, this is the most base, horrid-”    

“I don’t really care what you think of me,” The queen sighs. Her hand twists and the air in the room seems to twist. Loki collapses. In the wake of the odd magic, Thor is freed and manages to catch Loki before he hits the ground. His body is completely limp in his arms.    

The Queen is looking at her hand. The light that sparkles around her fingertips is green now.    

Rage, hot and red, fills Thor.    

“You’ll pay for this.” He shifts Loki, holding him tighter. “You’ll pay for this, I swear to the Norns-”    

“I doubt it. My, my, your brother’s power is…extraordinary. I do hope he lasts through midsummer, the illusions will be spectacular.”    

With a final roar, Thor succumbs to the combined power of the mages. Everything goes black.    

He wakes up locked in a cell, with Loki nowhere to be seen.  
   

“I was a fool,” Thor laments. “I should have believed him, or at the very least just…listened when he said he felt unsafe, as I’d promised. Should have agreed, without questioning, and left.”    

“It’s not your fault. This is…I’ve never even heard of a sorceress-queen who was so bold as to kidnap other mages to fuel her power, and I’ve been around the galaxy a few times.”    

“It’s not about that,” Thor says, rubbing his face. “It shouldn’t matter. What we know now about Thanos…I have to do better. Once we get out of here, of course.”    

“We’ve found him, he’s alive. He’s out cold, in some weird facsimile of the throne room.”    

“We tried to take him with us,” Bruce says. “But there was this barrier.”   

“Of course, there’s no way she would leave her power source without guard. He’ll be bound to that chair, drained of his magic while she profits. Take me to him.”   

“It’s this way,” The Valkyrie says. “But the magic-”    

“Show me to my brother, then you’ll stay with him and _I’ll_ go confront the queen. Once I have subdued her and she has released Loki, we will get out of here.”    

“I still don’t really understand why she needs Loki,” Bruce says as they walk swiftly through the halls.    

“She needs his magic. She’s not nearly as powerful as she claims to be, she’s been stealing other mages’ power for years. She keeps them alive just to feed off their magic, until they run out and die of it, then lures in the next victim. It’s disgusting,” Thor growls.    

“We’re lucky though, she had to keep both of you alive at least, to keep stealing the magic. I think I was just lucky I passed out in that stall or she would have killed me.” They reach the door. “It’s here,” the Valkyrie says.” But this time, it doesn’t budge under her hand. “Shit, those kids. They must have caught them, locked the door this time.”    

“Let me try this one.” Bruce crouches in front of the door. It’s a trickier lock this time and he feels the impatience radiating off of both Thor and the Valkyrie and it makes him clumsy. But he gets the door open and they rush in.   

The queen is standing in front of the dais, hands folded in front of her. A patient smile is on her face.    

“Welcome, I’ve been waiting for you.” There’s a ring of silence before the door slams shut behind them. Two of the older mages, the ones who had been in the shadows of the throne room, step out from behind them. “It’s been really entertaining, watching you three run around on your little adventures. Like you could really escape. It’s far too late for that.”    

“It is not,” Thor roars. “You _will_ release my brother.” Loki has not moved from the throne. He looks impossibly whiter, the color of bone. His breath is shallow and his face is completely blank.    

“I can’t do that. You must understand, I _need_ the magic to rule. You’ve seen how prosperous this planet is, all of that is due to the sacrifices made in this very room,” She gestures around. “It’s a service, what your brother’s doing. What you’ll do, someday.”    

“We’ll distract her and the mages,” Valkyrie whispers at Bruce. “Go to Loki. Stay with him.” Bruce nods.   

“You don’t need magic to rule,” Thor says. “Using it like that, it’s a crutch, it’s _weakness_.”    

“And Odin didn’t use magic to rule? You don’t also rely on your brother’s magic?”   

“My father used his own magic to rule. I use Loki’s magic, freely given, by his own will and under his own control only. This abhorrent thing you’re doing…this isn’t using magic, this isn’t ruling, this is _rape_ -”   

“I do what I have to do to save my people. I thought you would understand that.” She steps closer to Thor. “I had my own power, I did.” Bruce slips around to the edge of the room. As she talks and moves closer to Thor and the Valkyrie, he sneaks up the dais to Loki’s side. He puts two fingers on the pulse point in his neck. The beat is faint, but steady. He doesn’t know what else to do, so he rests his hand on Loki’s shoulder and watches the confrontation.    

“You used it up gaining power,” The Valkyrie accuses.    

“Yes. Sometimes that happens, a mage’s power doesn’t regenerate after large expenditures. I sacrificed myself, to become the sole ruler of this planet.” She says it with the air of nobility, like she’s going to start crying. “My husband was dead. His siblings were waiting in the wings to take my place. I couldn’t let that happen. There was a fight and I slew them.”    

“You didn’t sacrifice your magic then,” Thor sneers. “It left you because you murdered them in cold blood. You made it twisted and hateful and it fled from you.”    

“Lies!” She shrieks. “It was a sacrifice, one for my people. They worship me now. They bring me sacrifices. I nearly died killing my rivals and in it a became a god.”    

“You are no god.”    

“We’ll see about that.” She raises her hand and the light shoots towards Thor. It’s darker green now, stronger, and nearly identical to Loki’s own seidr as Bruce has seen him use it on the ship. The Valkyrie tenses, nearly throwing herself in front of Thor, but stops when the lightning gathers, spreads.    

Light flashes and for a moment Bruce is blinded. Thunder booms and there is a shriek. When the light and the spots in his eyes clear, Bruce can see Thor, sparks covering his skin and filling his remaining eye. The queen is stumbling back clutching her hand to her chest. The two other mages are unconscious, maybe dead, overpowered by the sheer force of Thor’s power. The sparks of lightning travel across the floor, covering even Bruce and Loki. They don’t hurt, just tingle slightly.    

Loki twitches under Bruce’s hand.    

“Loki?” But he’s still out cold. Bruce takes his pulse again and find it stronger, but racing. Sweat beads at his temples.    

“Let him go,” Thor booms.    

“Never!” The queen shrieks in return. The lightning flashes again and she screams, falling back.    

Loki’s eyes snap open and he surges to his feet with a cry. He stumbles while backing away from the throne and Bruce has to catch him before he falls down the stairs. He’s still colorless, wan. Even his eyes are pale, a soft, watery green. He blinks at the scene, breathing heavily. Then he bends at the middle and retches.    

The Valkyrie joins him on the dais, helping him hold Loki up.    

“Get him off the stairs,” She says. “He’s going to collapse.” His heaves slow and he lets the Valkyrie help him stumble down the steps. He drops to his knees at her feet.

“Make her give it back,” He croaks. “Give it back, give it back, give it back.” He clamps his hands on either side of his head and gags again, but there’s nothing left to bring up.    

“Come on, highness, take a breath,” The Valkyrie says quietly. She crouches next to him and puts her hand on his back. Bruce things about how Thor had called this rape, thinks about how it would feel to have someone steal something so intimate, so a part of himself, and he steps in front of Loki, surprising himself at the surge of protectiveness within him.    

The lightning flashes dangerously again.    

“Release it!” Thor commands. The queen laughs.    

“Even if I do, where will you go? You can’t escape this castle. My people will stop you, they will bring you back to me and I’ll cut your throats as a true sacrifice to the magic-” She is cut off, screaming, as a targeted bolt of electricity strikes her in the chest.    

Loki makes a strangled sound. His back arches and the Valkyrie steadies him as something happens with a sudden cold gust of air. When Loki blinks his eyes open his eyes are dark green again, and soft green light flows from his hands. The Queen is the one who is colorless now, pale and trembling on her back.    

“How dare you, how dare you, you’ll pay for this, that magic was mine, _MINE!_ ”

Loki and Thor lock eyes and Thor nods once.    

“Thor, wha-” Bruce tries to say. But then an ice cold hand closes around Bruce’s and reality _bends_. Air and matter and space twist together in a paralyzing, dizzying moment. Bruce opens his mouth to scream but before he can, before the Big Guy can tear his way out of his skin, reality slots into place again and he, Loki, and the Valkyrie collapse on the gangway of the ship, where Heimdall has been waiting for them.    

“What the _fuck!_ ” The Valkyrie moans. “What the fuck.”    

“Did we just leave Thor there? Loki? _Did we just leave Thor there?_ ”

Loki rises, still unsteady, but the panic is gone from his eyes. Heimdall rushes for him, catching him.

“Heimdall, are we ready to take off?”    

“Yes, I’ve called back the Sakaarans and done a headcount.”    

“Start the engines. We need to be ready to depart as soon as Thor returns.” Heimdall guides him to a stack of crates and leans him against it, making sure Loki won’t collapse before rushing off to fire up the ship.    

“Oh, you expect Thor to show up soon, since we just left him there!” The Valkyrie staggers to her feet.   

“We had to,” Loki says. He won’t look at either of them, trembling. “If we had stayed, we would have been a liability, a distraction. She still had a connection to me, to my seidr. If she had gotten hold of it again, she could have ripped all of it from me and used it to destroy my brother.” He twists his fingers together, worrying anxiously at his palm. “Besides,” He says with a small uncertain smile. “Do you really doubt so much in Thor? He’ll be fine.”    

“He’s right,” Bruce says. “If anyone I know could blast his own way out of there, it’s Thor, and it will probably be easier if he’s not worried about dragging us behind him.”

The Valkyrie still looks angry, uncertain. “If he’s not back-”    

“Of course, my lady, if he does not return promptly, you’re more than welcome to go charging back in there with your sword if you please,” Loki says. Silence falls.    

“You should sit,” Bruce says after a minute. Loki looks at him, startled. “You’re shaking.”    

“Oh,” Loki says, quietly surprised. The Valkyrie, her animosity buried down if not forgotten, fetches a chair and helps Loki into it.    

“Are you okay?” Bruce asks. He gently wraps a hand around Loki’s wrist, feeling the pulse. It’s fast, a little thready, but much stronger than before.    

“Hm? Oh. Yes, my magic’s back. She wasted quite a bit of it but I was unharmed. Just a little…shaky, I suppose.” Bruce moves his hand to his shoulder and keeps it there.

“I’ll get him some water,” The Valkyrie says. They give him water, and some dry bread to suppress the queasiness. The Valkyrie watches the clock.    

Thor bursts through with a swirl of bright lightning, touching down on the gangway and hitting the button to close the gates.    

“Heimdall, get us out of here,” He booms. The ship shudders and starts to rise. The lightning starts to dissipate. Loki lurches to his feet.    

“Brother-” Whatever he was going to say is cut off by Thor scooping him up, hugging him to his chest. Loki wraps his arms around his neck and holds on.    

“She won’t ever hurt anyone else again.” That’s all Thor has to say about the subject. The stains on his hands say the rest.  
   

It’s much later and the five of them are gathered, having a quiet evening in the ship’s bar. They’ve just finished setting their next destination, a market on the outer edge of this solar system, to make up for the fuel cells they were supposed to get from the queen.    

“I guess it really was too good to be true,” Thor muses.    

“What was the proposed exchange?” Heimdall asks.   

“Eighty cells, for fifteen hundred credits.”

Heimdall whistles. “That is a good deal.”   

“It just turned out to be fifteen hundred credits, _and_ the lives of Asgard’s royal family _and_ our magic,” Loki drawls. He’s laying, feet next to Thor, hands folded over his stomach. His hair drips water over the arm of the couch and onto the floor. He had washed for twenty minutes, exceeding the usual allotted time, but no one had said a word. They were just glad his cheeks were pink again, flushed from the heat of the shower. No one had really complained when their own showers were cold.    

“I have a question, Thor,” Bruce asks, taking a drink. “How did you know she murdered her rivals in cold blood? Or were you just trying to get a rise out of her?”    

“I confess, I didn’t know for sure,” Thor says, rubbing his short hair. “But I recalled a theory, that using magic for pure evil could result in magic being taken away.”    

“I thought that was a children’s story,” Valkyrie says. “Told to young mages to keep them in line.”    

“It’s technically true,” Loki says. “Though it depends on the circumstance, and the source of the magic. You think the queen fell prey to this curse? I believe I was still unconscious for this exchange.”    

“She claimed to have fought her husband’s siblings, killed them in the struggle over the throne. She framed it as self-defense, a sacrifice of her magic to protect her people from their despotism. That’s how she says she lost her magic, and why she needed more ‘sacrifices’ to continue protecting her people.” Thor shrugged. “Whether she did murder them in cold blood, or indeed sacrificed her magic, it matters not. She had to be stopped.” Loki thinks for a moment.    

“I suppose either could be true. If it were the first, I feel no sympathy for her whatsoever. To have her own magic desert her, she would have had to do something so profoundly cruel, she is deserving of no sympathy. But if it is the latter,” Loki sighs. “I suppose if she truly did make that sacrifice, I would pity her.”    

“Really?” The Valkyrie says. “She was going to kill you - she has killed, countless others, stole their magic from them.”

Loki shivers. “Yes. But if you haven’t felt how _wretched_ it is to have your magic taken from you. Far less than that drove me entirely mad, Banner can testify.”

Bruce quietly disagreed; from the snippets Loki had let slip about what happened between his suicide attempt on Asgard and the invasion of New York, he believed what happened to Loki was far, far worse than just the loss of magic, but he kept his opinions to himself. “Didn’t it hurt you when she was taking _your_ magic?” He asks instead. Loki frowns.    

“At the end, when I woke up, it hurt very badly. But while I was unconscious,” He pauses. “I can’t explain it. I felt it, felt every time she used it but I was paralyzed and floating. I felt so tired. I think I was too tired to feel the pain. I believe I would have stayed like that, getting more and more tired as she drained me. She was very good at it, she designed the spell so that her victims wouldn’t even struggle against her.”    

“Practice makes perfect,” The Valkyrie says dryly. They fall into silence.   

“They all knew about it,” Bruce breaks the silence.   

“Who?” Thor asks. “The people of the planet?”   

“I’m sure not all of them, but everyone I talked to…they were all workers in the palace or in the inner circles of the court. They all had to know and they lied to my face. Even the old woman I helped peel potatoes. She kept calling you a ‘polite young man’ when she knew you were dying in the basement. Damn.” There’s quiet for a minute.    

“But they gave you information that contradicted what the queen said,” Valkyrie says. “You said the old woman told you about Loki looking nervous. And the librarian was the one who told you about the queen’s magic. Maybe they did want it to stop, but didn’t know how to get it to. Maybe letting the information slip was their way of asking for help.”    

“But why did it take so long?” Thor wonders. “She’d been on the throne for decades. And when she took us prisoner she acted like Loki wouldn’t last more than a year, and he’s particularly strong-”   

“I can’t believe it’s taken _this_ to get you to compliment my magic, brother.”

Thor nudges him as he half smiles. “I compliment you on occasion.” Thor’s hand closes around Loki’s shin. “Maybe not enough.”    

“Oh, don’t get sentimental on me now,” Loki says with a tired smile. Thor’s hand squeezes. “People don’t know how to refuse rulers sometimes. Perhaps they were scared of what she would do to them if they spoke out. Most likely, they liked the prosperity and riches her magic brought them, and agreed that the sacrifice of some foreign mages was a small price to pay for their comfort. Guilt worms away at them over time but it doesn’t counterbalance how good the benefits are.”    

“I guess human nature is the same everywhere in the universe,” Bruce says, half to himself. He takes another drink.    

“I’d like to propose a toast,” Heimdall says, interrupting their grave silence. “A toast to Dr. Bruce Banner, who didn’t hesitate for a moment before going into danger to rescue his friends. He has proven that human bravery is unchanged the universe over.”

Bruce blushes. “Come on, I hesitated a moment.”    

“To Bruce Banner!” Thor raises his bottle. Valkyrie winks at him, tipping her bottle in his direction.

Loki looks at him with sharp eyes. “You don’t even really like me. I was once your enemy and even so, you stepped in front of me, when I was panicked and vulnerable. Heimdall is right. You’re a very decent person, Dr. Banner.”    

The conversation moves forward. The tension begins to bleed from their group as the ship takes them farther and farther away from that wretched and beautiful planet. Bruce finds himself smiling, just watching as the others talk and joke and tease.    

He thinks to himself, he may have actually found a home after all. He’s glad he hasn’t lost it. He’s glad he was enough to save them. The Hulk continues to slumber within him.

 

Coda:  
   

She holds her husband’s hand as his breath rattles in his chest.    

“Promise me,” He rasps and her hand tightens. He breathes his last and she sits with him for a long time, as his hand grows cold. She doesn’t weep.    

She dresses in her finest mourning clothes and leaves the body in the bedroom. She goes to the common area where her husband’s family is gathered, waiting for news. They sit in silence around the fire, faces pale and drawn.    

There has never been a sole ruler. She intends to be the first.    

“Amira,” Her husband’s twin has noticed her standing there finally. He rises, and his wife takes his hand. “Is it…”    

“It’s over. He is gone.” A quiet cry goes through the room. She watches them, resolve strengthening within her. Her husband’s twin, his three sisters, all their spouses.    

She will be the sole ruler. She will have the sole power. She cannot abide anything else.    

When she is done with them, their blood streaks the walls. The corpses lay in pools of it, faces twisted in agony. Their magic stirs in her core. She walks from the room. 

“My lady,” The guard outside the door greets her. “The children have been brought to the lower throne room, as you requested.”    

“Excellent. Bring me to them.”    

The Captain of the Guard meets her at the entrance. “The children are inside. You are certain…”   

“They cannot be allowed to challenge me. This is the only way, the only way to end it. The only way for us to be strong enough.”    

“The people are behind you, lady.”   

“Good. Bring me those that are not.”    

“Yes, your majesty.” Then she enters the lower throne room, the one made of stone and metal. It had been built for sieges, to provide sanctuary in times of danger. There are 16 children inside, the offspring of her husband’s siblings.    

It takes the castle cleaners weeks to finish washing the bloodstains from the stone.    

On the full moon, six months after Amira took the throne, she wakes feeling odd. Hungry.    

Empty.    

When she realizes what has happened she screams and screams. It takes time for the last of her twisted and cursed magic to burn its way from her body, but she survives. Survives but with nothing.    

Then she remembers the prisoners, the ones who had disagreed with her singular rule. There had been a mage among them. She summons the captain and has him bring the mage to the lower throne room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the one that got away from me. I have no idea how this got so long, it just sort of happened. 
> 
> I seriously considered leaving the reasons behind Amira's loss of magic up to interpretation, but then I decided just to make it clear that Amira was evil. 'Cause I wanted to. The new ‘up for interpretation part’ is whether or not her husband was making her promise to support his sibling on the throne or making her promise to seize the throne herself. Was he supporting her in her mad bid for sole power of rule? Was he asking her to help and support the next in line? Who knows.
> 
> Note about Names: (Just to make this End Note rival yesterday's for length...) When I was formatting I realized this was the first chapter that a couple of my naming quirks that I thought I'd share.  
> -Bruce is both the person who started calling it the Ark and the person who started calling the Valkyrie 'Val.' Like, he woke up from being the Hulk, heard what happened and was like 'Great, this is Noah's Ark. You refuse to tell us your real name? Cool, I'm going to call you Val."  
> -Despite Thor being king and Loki being the prince, referring to them as 'the princes' is kind of habitual at this point so when they're being spoken of collectively everyone still calls them 'the princes'/'highnesses'. Valkyrie's kind of picked up on it. Amira is doing it to put them down, still referring to their rank, but not really acknowledging Thor as a king.  
> -I have So Much Fun with what Valkyrie calls Loki specifically. It's great because yeah, neutrally whatever she just uses his name, but she also has this super formal title ('your highness') and this super informal derogatory nickname ('lackey'), both can be used along this spectrum of endearing-->mocking and its really fun to play around with which she would use and where it's placed on the spectrum. Just in the scene when they find him on the stone throne, she calls him 'highness' when she's trying to wake him, and then 'lackey' as a kind of frustrated/worried endearment. She never calls him 'my prince'. When she called him 'my prince' in 'Poisoned' that was like the single most performative thing she could call him in this already performative scene. They're like playacting this super angry powerful monarchy (Loki's rage is real, the 'powerful centralized monarchy' is a little...stretched) on their little revenge field trip and calling him 'my prince' is kind of part of the game. 
> 
> Speaking of 'Poisoned', I think between that and this incident, Team Revengers is probably going to take a little break from foreign courts for a while. ;-)
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com 
> 
> Thank you all for reading! <3


	8. Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Revengers. The Ark. No additional warnings. 
> 
> Thor is woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of coughing.

The coughing wakes Thor first. He’s pulled from sleep, vaguely confused. Who could be coughing? A moment later, his head clears and he realizes it’s Loki, lying on his back next to him in their shared bed. He coughs again in his sleep, the vibrations traveling across their thin mattress.    

Thor sits up, gently rolling Loki on his side to try and get him to breathe easier. He stops coughing, but his breath still rattles in his chest. He smooths back the hair from his forehead and is surprised at the warmth radiating from his brother’s forehead.    

“Thor?” The Valkyrie mumbles from the other bed across the room. “Is everything okay?”    

“Yeah, go back to sleep,” He whispers back. She complies, quickly dropping off to snore softly. Bruce stirs at the Valkyrie’s side, but doesn’t wake. Thor takes another moment to watch his brother sleep with a furrowed brow. Loki had complained about feeling fatigued the day before, but Thor had just thought he didn’t want to weed their artificial greenhouses. Sure, he’d been a little pale, but he was always pale. Now Thor had to admit, he perhaps was not just being lazy, but might actually be ill.    

Thor settles back down and drifts back to a half sleep. It doesn’t last very long before Loki starts coughing again, a harsh, painful sound. He moans, head tossing. Thor thinks he might feel warmer.    

“Loki,” He whispers. “Wake up.”    

“Mmhm, Thor what-” But he’s cut off by hacking. Thor helps him sit up as he breathlessly gets himself under control. He’s pressing a hand to the center of his chest, face twisted in pain. “Oh, I do not feel very well.”    

“It seemed like you couldn’t breathe lying down.” Thor rubs his back. “What can I do?”

Loki shrugs, wavering. “That’s nice, keep doing that.” Thor maneuvers them until his back is resting against the wall, Loki tucked into his side with his head on his shoulder. He keeps rubbing his back, steadily up and down as Loki relaxes into him. His breathing does seem to clear sitting up and after a while the brothers fall back to sleep.    

Thor wakes in the morning feeling _hot_. With a jolt he realizes it’s because Loki’s fever has risen. His breath rattles again in his chest, and he’s covered with a sheen of sweat. He moans when Thor moves to rise.    

The Valkyrie and Bruce are already gone. He leaves Loki propped against the pillows and goes to find them.    

They’re sitting with Heimdall in the kitchens.    

“You two just looked so cute, we didn’t have the heart to wake you,” Valkyrie says. “Want some breakfast? I think there’s enough left for you, but if Loki wants some he’ll have to wait for the next batch.”    

“Let’s let Loki sleep for a bit longer,” Thor says as he sits.    

“You seem worried,” Bruce says. “Is everything okay?” Thor sighs.    

“Loki woke me coughing last night. This morning, he felt hot, feverish. I’m hoping this is nothing a bit of rest won’t fix, but we’ll see.” He digs in to the oatmeal the Valkyrie brought him. “I’m going to go to the healers, see if they have anything to bring down the fever.”    

“You guys can get sick?” Bruce asks, mouth full. “I thought you were like gods, you can get sick?”    

“Of course we can get sick,” The Valkyrie responds. “It’s rarer than humans seem to fall ill. It’s also rarer still for us to die from illness, though there have been a few nasty viruses that have done it.”    

“It’s far too early to be worrying about that,” Thor says. “Loki’s probably just got a cold, it’s nothing that dramatic yet. He would get these on occasion when we were growing up, more often than other children our age, but they were normally mild and went away on their own.”    

“Is that part of the adopted thing?”

Thor pauses. “Maybe. I never thought of it, but perhaps he was indeed susceptible to diseases that the rest of Asgard was spared from.”   

“Could be a mage thing too.” The Valkyrie shrugs. “Sometimes the price of being in touch with your magic is it can pick up extra shit, make you sick when others wouldn’t.”    

“This is fascinating, wait, what kinds of-”   

“Either way, he’ll be fine,” Thor says before Bruce really gets going, more to reassure himself than the others. Heimdall nods in agreement. “I’ll just bring Loki some medicine and meet you on the deck.”    

Thor begs some medication from the harried apprentice healer - one of only two with healing training to make the ship. She listens to his description and gives him two, one to bring down the fever and the other to ease the coughing.    

Loki hasn’t woken, curling tighter around the pillow Thor had left him propped against. He coughs weakly.    

“Brother,” Thor says softly. He touches Loki’s shoulder. “Wake up-” Loki jerks awake with a cry, flinching away from Thor. His eyes remain wild and fearful for a moment before the nightmare releases him.    

“Thor…sorry,” He gasps.    

“It’s okay, I didn’t mean to startle you. How are you feeling?”

Loki squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t…I don’t know.” Thor touches his forehead.    

“Loki! You’re burning up.”

Loki blinks up at his brother. “That’s not right,” He says with a frown. “I shouldn’t be-”   

“Right, brother, you shouldn’t be.” Thor keeps his voice calm, recovering from his shock at how hot Loki’s skin had felt under his hand. “That’s why I brought you this, and some water. It will make you feel better.”    

The cough gets better with the medication, and Loki gets more lucid. He’s still a little floaty and far more pliable than normal. He lets Thor draw his head into his lap and stroke his hair without complaint.   

“Do you want me to stay?” Thor asks.   

“No, you don’t have to. I’m just going to sleep anyways.”    

“I’ll check in on you in a little while. If the fever gets worse I’m going to take you to the healers.”

Loki shivers. “What healers? The apprentice and the half-blind old woman? They can’t help me.”    

“Gudrun was very respected before she retired. And, they can watch you, make sure you don’t burn up.” Loki hums. “I’m serious.”    

“Fine. Not like I can stop you, not like this.” Loki starts to drift again, pulled under by the illness and the drugs. When he’s asleep, Thor lays him back against the pillows and draws the blanket over him.    

“I’ll be back in a few hours, brother.”    

The rest of the day passes more or less normally, though it’s busier than usual. Thor has to pick up his brother’s duties and check on him periodically through the day. He gets up in the early evening, joining them in the ship’s bar, wrapped in a blanket.    

“I couldn’t keep lying there,” Loki says with a sniffle when Thor asks him if he’s alright to be up. He coughs. “It was extremely boring. I was going mad.” Thor and Valkyrie play a game of cards while Bruce tries to learn the rules and Loki commentates.    

Night falls and Loki is no better but no worse. No one gets much sleep, as Loki coughs through the night.   

The next day dawns and Loki _is_ worse and they are all exhausted. Loki spends the day swimming in the heat of the fever, growing more and more delirious as the day progresses. The drugs are losing their efficacy. Before dinner, Thor manages to get him to take a cold shower, which drops his temperature down for a while. He forces him to take a few bites of dinner before he starts coughing again. This spell lasts a while, Thor keeping a steady hand on his back.    

He sleeps again, and Thor showers and unwinds with Valkyrie and Bruce in the bar. The three of them slip back to their room late. Loki is asleep but stirs when Thor feels for his temperature. He moans, tossing his head.    

“Mama?” He croaks. Thor freezes. He sits heavily on the side of the bed.    

“Thor,” The Valkyrie says quietly.    

“No, Loki.” Grief forms into a lump in his throat. “It’s me.” Loki blinks his eyes open.    

“Thor.”    

“Yes.” Loki shifts a little, trying to sit up. He gives up after a moment, pressing a hand to his chest.    

“My chest…hurts. Can you ask mother to come? And bring that potion she brewed from the berries we brought back from the steppes?” Thor can’t breathe. Tears fill his remaining eye. “Thor? Brother?”    

“Just rest, Loki. Rest.” He strokes his hair until he falls asleep.    

“Thor?”    

“I can’t do this, Val, I can’t-”   

“Yes you can,” She says softly. “You’re doing a good job, Thor, being king. You’ve been taking care of him for the past months we’ve been on this ship, you _can_ do this.”

“Thor, buddy, I know things look really shit right now, but Val is right. He’s just sick. He’ll get better.”    

“And our mother will still be dead. He still won’t have been able to go to her funeral. Asgard will still be gone, destroyed at _our_ hands-”    

“Stop. It’s not the time. You’re tired and it’s dark and everything feels worse at night. Lie down and go to sleep,” The Valkyrie commands.    

“It will look better in the morning,” Bruce says. “It always does.” Thor surrenders, laying down next to his brother. He entwines their hands together and takes a deep breath.    

He gets about an hour of sleep before Loki starts to cough again. He tosses and turns and coughs through the night.    

The Valkyrie and Banner get no sleep either. Eventually they decide to go sleep on the couches in the lounge, but Thor won’t leave him alone. Around 4am, Loki starts to weep in frustration.    

“I just want to _sleep_ ,” He cries. Thor holds him tight.    

“I know,” He whispers. “I know.” They sleep in short, light patches and then the lights are coming up in the halls. Loki sits straight up, back bowing with the force of the coughing. He buries his face in the sheet as he hacks wetly, Thor’s broad hand moving up and down his back.    

“Thor?” Loki says between heaving breaths. “I think…problem…” He sits back, revealing the sheet he’d been coughing into.    

It’s streaked with crimson. Loki’s blood, coughed up onto the fabric.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this isn't something that will get better with rest...
> 
> If I say I feel bad about leaving Loki like this, will you forgive me the cliffhanger? This is part one of three though, so there will be a resolution! You just have to wait until '28. Severe Illness' for it. (Then '30. Caregiver' for the conclusion, though that is the fluffiest thing ever. It's a reward for making it through 30 chapters of misery.) I'm weirdly committed to posting these in their original order. 
> 
> Also muahahaha, more platonic bed-sharing. Look, space is super tight on the Ark. Many families are sleeping like 8 to a room, so the four of them have to share and there were only two beds. It's awkward at first, but they get used to it and, as we saw in 'Insomnia', end up having a hard time going back to sleeping alone. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	9. Stranded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki & Valkyrie & Thor. The Ark. Warnings: heights, intrusive thoughts, suicidal ideation, revisiting a canonical past suicide attempt. 
> 
> They've crashed landed and it's up to Loki to get help. It's just that he can't.

“Loki, we need to get help,” The Valkyrie says.    

“I understand that.”    

“I can’t walk, your brother is unconscious and needs help.”    

“I understand that.”    

“Our communications array is down.”   

“I understand that.”    

“Loki, you have to cross the bridge. You can’t just stand there.” Loki shuts his eyes, heart pounding in his chest. “I swear, if you say ‘I understand that’ one more time, I will kill you. Once I can walk again.” So instead he says nothing.   

The bridge is only about two feet wide. There are no rails or sides of any kind, just a long strip of rock connecting this little jagged, half formed outcropping to the rest of the planet. The planet, originally no more than an asteroid, had been terraformed by settlers some years before, forcibly held in a habitable zone, its gravity fields artificially generated. This caused the planet to appear nearly like Asgard; a semi-flat disk suspended over empty space. But unlike Asgard, the artificiality makes it difficult to safely project when teleporting. It also interferes with electrical systems and navigation and was perhaps the cause of their current misfortune.   

Their crash landing had been unfortunate. The shuttle had just sputtered and died on liftoff. Loki was the only one uninjured in the crash, escaping with only a few scrapes. The Valkyrie’s femur had snapped. Thor is unconscious, bleeding from a wound in his head and his breath sounds heavy and wet. A broken rib, puncturing the lung, seems the most likely diagnosis. The Valkyrie holds his head in her lap, pressing her cape to the head wound, as Loki stands and tries to will himself to cross the narrow bridge. He’s the only one who can, the only one who can walk across that bridge and get them help.    

It’s just that he can’t.    

He gets to the edge of the bridge and looks down and something in him breaks.    

“Loki-”   

“I know, I know.” Tears gather in his eyes. He takes a shaky breath.   

_I could have done it, Father, for all of us._

_No, Loki._

_-let go, do it, just let go, you have nothing left, just jump._   

He gasps in a ragged breath, stumbling away from the edge. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”    

“Loki, you _have_ to. We’re stranded here unless you cross that bridge. It’s the only way off this fucking rock. What? Are you telling me you’re afraid of heights?”    

“I once tried to kill myself by jumping off the bifrost, into the Void.” He says very quickly. He laughs, a manic, wild laugh. “Well. I fell, it was an accident at first but then I let go and that was on purpose and…I’m not quite sure I ever really stopped falling.” There’s silence for a full minute. Loki is left alone with his thoughts and the sound of wind, pulling him towards the Void, echoing in his ears.   

“Loki, highness, I need you to get it the fuck together right now and cross the bridge. Now is not the time to lose your mind.”

Loki nods. “I know.” He takes a deep breath and steps onto the bridge.    

The Void pulls at him. He tries to keep his eyes forward on his destination, but occasionally his gaze slips downward. The abyss beneath his feet is a rocky crevice, dividing the planet neatly in two. He sees stars twinkling far beneath him and freezes. He struggles to control his breathing.    

 _Keep going, you have to make it across_ , He says to himself, over and over. _Thor and the Valkyrie need you to do this_. He forces himself to take another step.   

 _I could have done it…_    

His foot hits a rock, knocking it from the edge of the bridge. He makes the mistake of looking down as it falls, falling further and further…   

 _Loki, no!_ That last one was Thor’s voice, desperately trying to reach for him. His head spins. His knees are wobbling so hard he doesn’t think he’ll need to decide to do it this time, he’ll probably just collapse and fall back into the Void, like he never left.    

 _Eyes forward, forward_. He locks his eyes on a fixed point on the other side, and bites down his panic. He starts counting his breaths, breathing in for ten counts, holding it for ten, then letting it out for ten. He thinks he remembers that their mother had taught Thor that trick to control his anger when they were young, but Loki’s found it more useful. Concentrating on the numbers empties the rest of his mind.    

His feet reach solid ground, the other side of the bridge and he doubles over, panting in relief.    

“Thank the Norns,” He gasps. “Thank the Norns.”    

Then he runs.  


“So. Can we talk about this?” The Valkyrie says, taking another sip of soup. They’re in the planet’s basic first aid station, resting until their shuttle is ready to get them back to the Ark. Thor keeps a hand on his side and his expression remains pained, but at least he is conscious and breathing easier and healing rapidly, as usual.    

Loki sits on a stool between them, wound very tight. He does _not_ want to talk about this. He wants to be back on the ship, where he can pretend he’s not floating through that horrible Void.

“What’s there to talk about?” Loki says, very nervous.

Thor frowns at him. “What is it? Are you alright?”    

“I think we should talk about the bridge,” The Valkyrie says.    

“The bridge?”    

“Don’t worry about it, brother, you were unconscious for this part. I got across, didn’t I? I got help.”    

“Yes, but you almost didn’t. You almost couldn’t. I just thought you might want to talk about why.”    

“I meant what I said. There’s nothing to talk about. It was…well it wasn’t that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, but so much has happened since. I do not…I do not like falling. Or empty space.” Thor’s brow furrows. “The only way off the section we crashed on, was a rock bridge suspended out over…over nothing. Stars,” He explains.

Understanding dawns on Thor’s face. “Oh.”    

“I had…difficulty. But I did it in the end so we don’t have to talk about it.”    

“How many times have you _fallen_ from the bifrost? ‘Cause, that’s how you got to Sakaar right? Hela threw you off?” The Valkyrie asks, incredulous. Loki laughs, a bit hysterically. His vision is blurred.    

“Just twice. I’d rather not repeat it a third time.”    

“And the first time was suicide?” The Valkyrie asks.

Thor’s expression splinters. “I’d rather not talk about this either,” He murmurs.    

“Yes,” Loki says. “I tried to kill myself. I ended up meeting a far worse fate. Can we please drop it now?” He looks at his hands instead of looking at them.    

“Okay, Loki.” She swings her feet over the side of the bed, testing her weight on her leg. It holds. She limps over to Loki, perched on his stool. And hugs him.    

He stiffens, mostly out of surprise.    

“I’m sorry you had to cross that bridge. But you did good, lackey.”    

“You’re hugging me.”    

“Yup, it’s generally a sign of affection and appreciation, one usually returns it instead of just sitting there.”

He tentatively places his arms around her back. A moment later he tightens his embrace, closing his eyes. He grasps onto her like a life preserver, clinging like a child.    

He can name exactly two people who had hugged him like this in the last decade. Maybe longer. Now there’s three and if he expected it would come from the prickly, almost as emotionally-ruined as he was, Valkyrie…    

Well. It was a nice surprise.    

He holds onto her as his eyes sting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki's having some very literal 'appel du vide' here. 
> 
> 'L'appel du vide' is French for 'the call of the void', that feeling you get when you're on top of something high and your brain just goes 'hey what if we jump?' It's not technically suicidal ideation, just your brain being weird. Happens to about 50% of people, including people who are not actually suicidal. There's a wbur segment/article here: http://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/29/the-call-of-the-void if you're interested in learning more. (Obviously, suicide/heights/disturbing content warning for the article as well. The audio segment does a good job giving a heads up for the most disturbing parts.) 
> 
> I used to get it sometimes when I took the train to work, which is why I became interested in this concept. (Also, yes, some mystery has been lifted, I'm from Boston and while I don't live there right now, I still love wbur.) For people who aren't normally suicidal, it really is just your brain being weird and processing information, but among people who are already suicidal these intrusive thoughts can be more serious. 
> 
> I know you all are here for The Whump, but I'm hoping you learn something too. ;-) Thanks for coming to my TED talk. 
> 
> I think it's interesting that Loki's is a very literal 'call of the void' and there's this little part of him that kind of thinks that maybe all of this has been a very elaborate hallucination and he's never actually left the Void. (He has, this is real, and the Valkyrie's little hug is a nice grounding. <3 ) I also think Loki and Thor have never actually managed to talk about the first time Loki "died," because they are just trying super hard to not think about how Loki had tried to kill himself right in front of his brother. Hardcore avoidance. They probably should talk about it. They are not the best at dealing with stuff like this. So emotionally well-adjusted. /sarcasm. Yeah.
> 
> I am now going to go lock myself in a cafe until I finish my MA thesis. Until tomorrow! 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	10. Bruises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Loki. Sanctuary. Warnings: claustrophobia, aftermath of strangulation
> 
> The Ark's journey is at an end. Thor and Loki spend their first night in the care of Thanos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional Warning Note: As you can perhaps expect, any chapter set in Sanctuary will bear heavy warnings for torture, both physical and psychological. Sanctuary is not a nice place. Things get pretty rough between being recaptured by Thanos and landing in the Avengers' backyard.

Thor’s head pounds, his stomach flips. The nausea rises in the back of his throat and he has to stop, vomiting over the side of their path. His captor drags him forward.

In the moment of hesitation, he glances behind him and sees the creatures - the Children of Thanos they’d called themselves - who carry the limp form of his brother on their shoulders. He can hear Loki’s ragged, gasping breathing trailing them the whole walk into this ‘sanctuary.’    

They are brought to a room, with a small rectangular cage in the center. Thor doesn’t think they’ll both fit inside, but somehow they do. It’s not large enough for either of them to straighten out, or stand, or not be touching each other, but Thor isn’t particularly interested in being far from Loki anyway. They’re shoved in and the cage is locked, side by side. Loki’s heaving in breaths, the air whistling in and out of his throat.    

“I will come for you when I need you,” Thanos says. “Before I go, I thought you’d like to see this.” He waves a hand and a screen appears. The Ark, twisted and burning, listing to the side in empty space. As Thor watches their home for the last year and a half glow with purple light then explode into a thousand, jagged pieces. Thanos cuts the feed. “You’re mine now, and you’ll have your part to play in balancing the scales of the universe. Think about that, while you wait for me.”    

Thor can’t really _think_ of anything, his head hurts too badly. Later, he’ll think of Heimdall, and the Valkyrie, and Bruce, and his people, and wonder if they made it off, but that thought is beyond him for now. It’s hard to think of anything beyond the pain and the awful sound of Loki’s breathing. They’re left alone, in the tight cage, in silence.    

“I’m sorry,” Loki gasps out after a while. “I’m so sorry.”    

“Shhhh.” Thor twists, managing to get Loki folded into his arms, head tucked under his chin.    

“I couldn’t, I couldn’t-”    

“Stop trying to talk,” Thor says. “You don’t have to talk.” He tilts Loki’s chin back to examine his throat. Dark, black and blue bruises bloom on his neck, in the shape of fingers. Thor feels like he could vomit again. Loki’s hand grasps at his shirt.    

“I can’t breathe,” Loki gasps. He makes a choked gurgling sound and Thor is suddenly terrified. Did Thanos shut them in here just so that Loki could die in his arms? So Thor would be locked in a cage with his brother’s corpse?    

“It’s okay, it’s okay, just calm down.” He forcibly suppresses his own panic to soothe his brother. Loki’s chest heaves as he struggles through every breath. “Loki, listen to me: it’s going to be okay. Your throat is swelling.” Loki’s eyes widen. “You _will_ heal. It will get easier. But you have to stay calm, and trust me.” Loki writhes in his arms, coughing and trying to suck in air, and failing to get in enough to satisfy him. Thor just holds him, humming, and trying to hold himself together.    

Hours later, Loki is listing in his arms, lips and fingertips tinged blue, eyelids fluttering.    

“Loki, please, stay with me,” Thor cries. “Please, just don’t leave me, don’t leave me here.” Loki doesn’t respond. Thor adjusts him in his arms, cradling him a little tighter. He presses his lips to the top of his head and the tears begin to flow. He doesn’t know how long he sits, weeping over his brother’s limp body as Loki breathes in thin wheezes. After a while, he realizes that Loki’s breath sounds a little better. His lips are no longer blue. He wakes not long after that.    

“Thor?”    

“I’m here,” Thor gasps around sobs.

Loki takes a shaky breath. “You’re crying.”    

“I thought you…” He buries his face in Loki’s hair instead of finishing. Loki coughs weakly, clinging to his arm. They eventually fall asleep like that, exhausted from pain and trauma, and when they wake, Loki’s throat is still bruised, his voice still hoarse, but his breathing is clear and his eyes are more alert, if scared. He doesn’t remember anything that happened between being choked by Thanos and waking up in Thor’s arms.    

“What did he say?”    

“He said that we were his, and that he would come for us when he wanted us. At least it seems like he won’t kill us right away.”

Loki shivers. “It would have been better if he had killed us.” Thor has no response. Loki leans against him and they fall into silence.

Thor feels himself starting to cramp up, his legs aching from the tight space. He tries to shift, tries to find a comfortable position but the cage is too small. How long could Thanos possibly leave them in there?    

In the end, they are left in the cage for five days straight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, aftermath of That Scene, but Loki survives and they're both in the hands of Thanos now. 
> 
> I read a lot of really horrifying articles about strangulation in domestic violence cases and the psychological effects and how it's a power trip for an abuser to let their victim know that they have control over everything, including their breath...yup. I thought it made a lot of sense for Thanos. Today's terrible fact is that it takes 33lbs of pressure to completely seal the windpipe. 
> 
> Yup, that's what I learned today. Also, PSA, if you're ever the victim of attempted strangulation, please seek medical help even if you think you're okay, especially if you have trouble breathing or speaking, because there are a lot of post-injuries that can be fatal as they progress in the hours after the event. This is true of any sort of trauma that reduces airflow and oxygen to your brain, including choking and drowning. 
> 
> [Canon side-note: I'm like not suuuper confident in my general depiction of Sanctuary. I might be piecing together a bunch of fanon stuff. I'm currently rewatching some of the movies to remind myself of plot points, but I haven't gotten to the ones that show us Sanctuary, so apologies for canon-inaccuracies!]
> 
> I'm going to go do something fun and happy to take my mind off of this. Until tomorrow! 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	11. Hypothermia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki & The Hulk. The Ark. No additional warnings.
> 
> An engine stall plummets the temperature of the Ark, and Loki's the only one who can fix it.

Loki wakes slowly, unsure of where he is. His head throbs and at first he tries not to move, but then a sharp spike of pain in his temple jerks him further awake. He just barely makes it to his hands and knees in time to vomit up the contents of his stomach. When the heaves slow he sits back and catches his breath. He touches a trembling hand to the side of his head, wincing.    

“What in the Nine…” He whispers in the silence. He feels dried blood caked into his hair and streaked along the side of his face. The most disconcerting part is that he doesn’t remember how he got like this. There’s just a blank gap in his memory.    

They were going to make a jump, into hyperspace, at a designated jump spot. That had been the plan. He remembers Heimdall programming the coordinates…   

And nothing after that. The ship is eerily silent. The only lights on are the stripes of emergency lighting on the floor. They were dead in the water, the hum of the engines gone. They must have stalled out. Violently, it seems, if he hit his head hard enough for a concussion. He manages to get to his feet, though there’s a sharp pain in his leg. He ignores it. He has to find the others.    

As he limps forward, he realizes how cold it was, how _deathly_ cold. He doesn’t shiver, but he can feel it seeping into his bones. His breath fogs before his face. The climate control must be down as well. He makes it into the next room-   

“Damn.” Thor and the Valkyrie and Heimdall are all unconscious, limp on the floor. He stumbles to Thor’s body and lets himself fall to his knees beside him. “Thor?” He shakes his brother but gets no response. At least he is breathing, his chest rising and falling evenly, if slowly. His skin is so cold, a touch of blue on his lips. Loki checks the Valkyrie and Heimdall, finding them equally cold, equally dead to the world.    

A halting, limping journey through a few levels of the ship shows the rest are about the same. Loki is the only one awake. All succumbed either to the cold or the concussive force of their stall in the hyperjump. Probably hypothermia, if his own consciousness is anything to go by. Likely it is his Jotun biology that immunizes him to the cold.    

Choking down hysterics, he checks his reflection in the first reflective surface he finds, but his face is still his own, pale, Asgardian reflection staring back at him. He’s not been forced to shift forms against his will. Such a thing has only happened twice since he learned the truth of his birth, and it had been quite unpleasant both times.   

He makes it to the control room and runs a report on the life support systems. Not only has the heat been suspended by the stall, their oxygen production has as well. They’re operating on about 60% capacity, though Loki feels no adverse affects. Do Jotuns need less oxygen than the Aesir? A question to contemplate at another time.   

The report thankfully shows that there hasn’t been any structural damage, just the stall from the shock of a jump. He can manually reset it, but he’ll have to go down to the engines himself. No matter. The pain in his leg has already faded, and his head feels clearer. Now that he has an approximation of the situation, and a solid plan, the fear has subsided. He smiles, small and relieved, and closes the report.   

“Puny God.” He jolts and stumbles back, pressing himself against the control panel.    

“Don’t-” Loki gasps as the Hulk’s massive form fills the small room.    

“What Puny God do?”    

“I didn’t do anything.” He keeps his voice low and calm. “There was an accident. Something went wrong and the ship stalled. I can fix it-”   

“Where Thor? Angry Girl?” The Hulk roars.    

“I can take you to them,” Loki says very quickly. “They’re unconscious, but they’re not hurt. They’re just sleeping, because of the cold.”

The Hulk grunts. “Okay. Puny God go.” Loki leads the Hulk into the room where Thor, the Valkyrie, and Heimdall lay limp on the ground.    

“Thor!” The Hulk roars, poking at him. “Wake up!”    

“He won’t wake,” Loki says. “Not until I start the ship back up. He’s too cold and there’s not enough oxygen.”    

“Why should Hulk trust Puny God?”

Loki takes a shaky breath as the Hulk rounds on him. “It’s not like you have much of a choice. I’m the only other one awake, I’m the only one who can restart the engines-”    

“Puny God is the God of Lies.”

Loki swallows. “Yes, I’ve been called that. But I’m not lying now. I’m not going to hurt him.”    

“Hurt him before.”    

“Yes, yes I have, very badly. But I swear, I won’t now.”       

“Swear mean nothing.”    

“Look, you can stay with them. You can stay and watch them, just let me go restart the engines. It will take me,” Loki does a quick calculation. “Twenty minutes. If the ship’s not back on in twenty minutes, you can come find me and beat me again if you want.” The Hulk looks like he’s considering. “You can keep them warm, you give off more heat that anyone. Just stay with them, and I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”    

“Fine…” The Hulk finally says. He, somewhat roughly, gathers up the unconscious bodies of the three Asgardians and tucks them around him. Loki doesn’t know if he wants to dissolve into hysterics at the sight of the Hulk warming them like a mother hen with her eggs or throw up again at the thought of the Hulk touching his brother. He settles for a watery, insincere smile and draping his cape over Thor.    

“Twenty minutes, and I’ll be back.”    

“Go, Puny God.” Loki does not need to be told twice.    

He hurries through the eerily silent halls, climbing deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship. The manual resets are all the way at the bottom. By the time he reaches them, his heart is pounding with anxiety. He is so alone in the bottom of the silent ship.    

Fourteen of the electrical switches had tripped. He methodically starts them back up again. One of the fuel cells had fried, so he replaces it with a fresh one.    

“Please work, please, please work,” He mutters as he programs the final restart steps. There’s a tense moment of silence before there’s a grinding sound and the engines start back up again. Loki whispers a _thank you_ and starts the climb back to the inhabited parts of the ship.    

The people are already starting to wake when he climbs out of the hatch.    

“Your highness,” A young man approaches, one of the Valkyrie’s guards, holding his head. He’s shivering uncontrollably, lips blue. “What happened?”    

“A stall. We’re back running and things should equalize before long. Gather everyone who can walk in the main hall, have them bring as many blankets as they can carry. We have to keep warm. I’ll deal with the injured. Anyone who can’t be moved, write it down and I’ll go to them.”    

“Yes, your highness, right away.” The young man hurries off, shivering, leaving Loki to face the Hulk.    

“Puny God did it.” The beast sounds almost surprised when Loki returns.   

“Yes,” Loki says. “It should get warmer in here. Once they wake up, we’ll move to the main hall, it will be warmest there.” He sits down across the room, as far away from the Hulk as he can. He tells himself that it’s because he doesn’t want to transfer any cold to his unconscious friends.    

Heimdall is the first to stir. “A stall?”

Loki nods. “Seemed a violent one. Lost climate control and oxygen production. Everything’s back online now.”    

“There’s blood on your face.”

Loki blinks in surprise. “I’d forgotten.” He touches his fingers to the side of his skull, feeling the caked and dried blood. “I must have given that young man quite a fright. I told him to gather all the people in the main hall. And to do a count of the injured that can’t be moved.”    

“Good.” Heimdall slips out from under the Hulk’s arm. “I’ll go help coordinate. Blast, it truly is cold.”    

“I set the heat up as high as it can go, but I’m afraid the engines will take a while to warm up.” Heimdall claps him on the shoulder before he leaves for the main hall. The Valkyrie and Thor slowly rouse.    

“Oh hey, Big Guy,” The Valkyrie says.    

“Angry Girl.”    

“Keeping us warm?”    

“That’s what Puny God told Hulk do.”    

“Puny God?”    

“That’s me,” Loki says waving a hand.    

“Brother, are you alright?”    

“Oh yes, just a little blood, I’m not the one who’s just been unconscious, freezing to death for the past…hour? I’m not sure how long that was, actually.”

Thor struggles out from underneath the Hulk’s arm. As soon as he’s out of the Hulk’s grip, Thor shivers. “Damn, it’s freezing.” He wraps Loki’s cape tighter around himself. “What happened?”   

“A stall, in the hyperspace jump. The engines and climate control failed and if it had gone on much longer you all would have frozen to death. So. You’re welcome. It’s still going to take a while for the temperature to reach a comfortable level.”    

“I think I’m going to stay here for now, kay Big Guy?” The Hulk grunts his assent.   

“It’s funny, I don’t feel cold at all,” Loki laughs, though it’s a bit strained.    

“Aren’t we lucky, then? That you did not succumb to the cold?” Thor says. He offers Loki a hand up.    

“I’ve assembled the people in the main hall, Heimdall just went to help organize. There are some injured, and it will be warmer there, if you are inclined to escape your heater, Valkyrie.”

Thor pulls him to his feet. “Let’s go then.”    

“I’ll be along in a minute,” The Valkyrie says so the brothers leave without her, headed to the hall. Loki’s thinking about ways he could warm the hall with magic or otherwise when Thor speaks.     

“I meant what I said,” Thor says quietly. “I know we haven’t discussed this and we probably should, at some point, but we were fortunate that you were there, that you-”   

“That I’m Jotun, is that what you were leading up to?”    

“Yes, brother. That you were Jotun and you can withstand the cold.”   

“Thor, if we’re going to have one of these little…” Loki sighs and waves a hand. “Heart to hearts about my adoption, we should probably do it while you’re not shivering. I think it would ruin the mood, if your teeth were chattering as you were declaring the depth of your fraternal affection for me.” Thor chuckles.   

“Fine, brother, but soon.” His teeth do, indeed, chatter.   

“Fine. Soon.” Thor looks at him and wrinkles his nose. “What?”    

“We need to wash the blood of your face before you frighten any more of our people.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and then they never talked about it, because they're disasters at communication. 
> 
> I just love the image of the Hulk as a mother hen. So ridiculous. Loki also finds it ridiculous but also a little nauseating. 
> 
> I don't have any fun facts for this chapter, it was just short and not too cruel to the characters. Tomorrow though, we're back to Sanctuary. Whelp. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	12. Electrocution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Loki. Sanctuary. Warnings: torture (both physical and psychological) 
> 
> Thanos's torturers try to tear them apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the Sanctuary tag. Things are not going well. For serious, there's some pretty intense torture in this chapter.

When they put the block of rubber into his mouth, Loki doesn’t understand what they’re planning to do. He glances across the scene of their nightmare at Thor, bound identically opposite from him. He’s gagged and shaking. Loki lets his head drop back. He’s so much more _used_ to this than Thor. He’s so broken that the tortures barely affect him anymore, not after the first week of his second stay on Sanctuary. He endures the pain, he endures the darkness of their cell, and one day they will tire of their games and kill him and it will all be over.    

Vaguely, he understands they want to _transform_ him again. They want the Loki that they had sent to Midgard back. Thanos thinks if he keeps torturing them, eventually Loki will do anything to escape, and he will again become that vicious, vengeful god. But all of that’s been burnt out of him. There’s nothing left.    

But they’re going to keep trying. Maybe it’s Thor they’re trying to break now. _That would make sense_ , Loki thinks idly. He’s not even paying attention to what Thanos’ children are doing to him as he muses on his own brokenness, the futility of this torture. They’re twisting something sharp and cold around his fingers, testing and tightening the straps that secure him to the chair.    

Then a switch is flipped and burning agony surges through him. Every muscle in his body seizes, every nerve screams. Since the first week, he hasn’t made a sound during their tortures, but now he howls, half involuntarily, the scream torn from his throat.    

It stops and he’s left limp and twitching in his bonds, breathing raggedly through the gag. He realizes it’s electricity, a current passed through him from electrodes attached at various points on his body. He’s barely given a moment’s rest before the current is turned back on, its hum soon drowned out by the sound of his own screams reverberating in his ears. It’s held for longer this time and when it’s finally turned off Loki’s heartbeat is stuttering. Black spots float through his vision. Through them, he can see Thor straining for him, furiously screaming wordless curses. The current’s turned on again and Loki really thinks he’s going to die this time.    

Somehow he doesn’t. He comes to when they turn it off again and realizes he’s weeping, tears dripping down his cheeks. He can’t control it. He’s writhing against the restraints, sobbing wretchedly, before he even realizes he’s doing it.   

“You see how he suffers?” The torture master’s voice drawls. “You see what the power of the voltage does to him? How it _hurts_ him?” The current again, agony and seizing muscles and screaming, then he’s limp and panting. “What your power could do to him?”    

 _Oh Thor, no_ , Loki thinks. He wants to look at his brother but the lingering pulses of electricity traveling through his nervous system make his muscles weak and uncoordinated. He can’t even turn his head.    

It’s not the same. The lightning that is his brother’s power and the electricity being pumped through him is nothing alike. But no doubt Thor is remembered another incident, one from early in their time on the Ark, before Thor had full control over his powers.    

He barely remembers what they had been arguing about. It was nothing, a drop in the ocean of their fights, but it had dragged on and Loki had lost his temper. He had shouted, used his words as a knife to wound. Then Thor had lost his own temper, grabbed Loki’s arms in his fury. The lightning had jolted through him then, silencing his tongue. Thor’s eyes had gone wide with horror as Loki’s body had seized, as the air had been driven from his lungs and he had collapsed to his knees. Their argument had been quickly forgotten as Thor frantically made sure he was okay. He had been, then. He wasn’t so sure he was going to walk away from this now.    

They’re trying to drive them apart. Make Thor afraid of himself around his brother. Trying to associate pain and lightning for Loki. But whoever devised this torture knows nothing of magic. Knows nothing of how Loki can feel his brother’s soul through his lightning. How he can taste familiarity through the pain. This won’t work, just one more futile torture.    

He doesn’t know how long it goes on for. By the end, he’s twitching uncontrollably, small pained noises driven from him. The skin under the electrodes is scorched. They drag the brothers back to their cell, dumping Loki unceremoniously onto the floor. He lands facedown and doesn’t move.   

He blacks out for a while. When he comes to again, he’s cold and shivering, painful little twitches passing through him. And alone. He presumes. If Thor had been here, he wouldn’t still be lying on the ground like this. They’d taken to curling together after these sessions; holding onto one another like they were still children, to take what limited comfort was available on this dark ship. If Thor was here, he’d be in his arms. So he must be alone, and resigns himself to have to wait for Thor to be brought back to him.    

It takes effort but he rolls himself onto his side. And with a jolt, realizes he’s in fact not alone. Thor is watching him from the shadows, grief plain on his face.    

“Thor,” Loki croaks. “Brother.” He reaches out a hand towards him. Thor doesn’t make a move towards him. “ _Please_.”

Thor makes a small choked sound. “I can’t. What if I-”    

“Fool. He was _lying_.” Loki manages to roll onto his back, but the effort leaves him breathless. He rests his hands on his stomach and has to take a moment to breathe before he can speak again. “It’s nothing, not the same. Please just, come here.”    

“But-”    

“Thor, _please_ ,” Loki cries, tears stinging in his eyes. “We have nothing else left here. Don’t just leave me lying-” Thor lets out a shaky sob and inches closer. Slowly, cautiously, he takes Loki into his arms. He touches him like the lightest brush of their skin would send the electricity surging through him again. Loki clings to Thor, not letting him release him. They curl together in their now familiar position, Loki tucked under his brother’s arm, head on his chest. He lets Thor cry, just as Thor in nights past has let him cry.

After a while, Thor relaxes, tentatively starting to stroke his hair. “I’m sorry.” Loki turns his face into Thor’s chest. “I’m so sorry, Loki.”        

“Stop. Hush.” He takes a shaky breath. “Not your fault.” A tremor passes through him, the aftershocks of the assault. Thor smooths back his hair, kisses his temple.

“I’m going to get you out of here. I’m going to get _us_ out of here.” Loki can hear resolve in Thor’s voice. Resolve is dangerous. Resolve means there’s still something in him to break.    

He closes his eyes and breathes in the smell of the storm as it clings to his brother’s skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, does it help that *I* feel bad I've done this to them? 
> 
> I think Loki's attitude towards his time with Thanos is similar to the way he talked about feeling like he never really stopped falling through the Void. Like, when they end up there again, he's like 'okay I'm back here I'm just resigned to this' whereas Thor is experiencing it all for the first time and is not doing so hot. Don't worry - they spend far less than a year on Sanctuary this time, so Thanos doesn't even come close to getting what he wants. (Which, in this case, is 'Loki punished and a new vengeful, angry god I can turn loose on Earth.') 
> 
> I clearly, *clearly* take a much more brutal and sadistic view of Thanos than all the dudebros who came out of Infinity War being like 'oh man Thanos was so relatable, his goal was so reasonable, he was practically a hero.' Like, what did you miss the fact that he opened the movie slaughtering refugees and torturing one of the heroes and brutally murdering an audience-favorite, actually complex antagonist? The part where in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 *Gamora* says she was tortured by Thanos and she was his "favorite" daughter? Like what? (If you're wondering 'Hey, Bereft, where have you seen these dudebros?' the answer is, of course, Reddit. Any time IW comes up on Reddit there has to be one bro who's like 'You know, I think Thanos had some interesting ideas...' Stahp.) 
> 
> Tomorrow we're returning to the 'Golden Age' on the Ark, and some emotional fallout of certain revelations. Mmmm. 
> 
> Plus, I officially figured out what I was going to do for the last prompt I hadn't yet started writing. (It was '26. Broken Ribs'.) That one was giving me trouble but the muse finally came through for me yesterday. Hallelujah. 
> 
> As always:  
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	13. Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Loki. The Ark. Warnings: mentions of past torture 
> 
> The aftermath of certain revelations that stir up some old wounds. 
> 
> [aka the 'Three months ago, you promised...' incident from '7. Kidnapped'.]

They have been sailing on the _Statesman_ for precisely one month. That means it has been precisely two weeks since Loki had finally confessed to stealing the Tesseract, finally confessed who had sent him to Earth.    

Thor still did not trust him. Loki could still feel anger rolling off him, even when he was doing demonstrably kind things, like handing him food at dinner or steadying him when the ship rocked. He did these things with a begrudging, resigned look on his face. Like he claimed Loki as his burden but wasn’t going to be happy about it. It was slowly driving Loki insane.    

Where he would once delight in solitude, delight in provoking his brother to such maddening frustration, he now felt himself unraveling in the face of his brother’s disappointment. He reached for him, desperate for connection he didn’t quite know how to ask for, only to let his hand fall when Thor stepped out of his grip. The nightmares had gotten worse. They had grown constant. Not a night passed in the last two weeks that he hadn’t woken with tears staining his face, body wracked with silent sobs. His bones ached, phantom pains of old torments. Thor cared for him if they woke him, but he did that in the same detached, resentful way he did everything else.    

As Loki winds tighter and tighter, they land on the trade planet of Delkor-V and Thor asks for volunteers to go with him to find medical supplies.    

“I will,” Loki says quickly. The brothers’ eyes meet. Thor looks uncertain. “I’ve been doing the inventory on the medicines, I’m the one who knows what we need.”  

“Your majesty, Loki is right,” Heimdall says. “The two of you should go together.”   

“Can I trust you?” Thor says quietly later, when they’re standing on the gangway, waiting to depart.    

“Let me prove it to you, brother.” Thor gives him a small, sad smile that reminds Loki of Svartalfheim, when they had argued on the skiff. Loki stomach flips with nerves.

The nerves dissipate as they gather their supplies and begin to explore the market. They fall into a easier camaraderie. Thor teases him good-naturedly when he looks longingly at a bookseller, and Loki does the same when they pass a forge and Thor pauses. It feels comfortably familiar and the tight bands around Loki’s chest loosen somewhat.    

Thor suggests they dine together before returning to the ship.    

“We can take a break for a little longer, they won’t miss us yet.” Thor takes a deep breath, turning his face towards the sun. “Besides, we should use the time we have for some fresh air. The stale air on the ship was driving me mad.” Loki dares to hope that some of Thor’s mood the last few weeks had been his confinement on the dark, cold ship.    

They separate in the large square, Loki purchasing bottles of water flavored with the planet’s light citrus fruit. He waits for Thor to return with food. 

The market square grows more crowded and an uneasiness grows in Loki’s gut. Something feels wrong, though the sun is still shining, the air is still fresh and warm, and the people move around him chatting and laughing, relaxed. Breathing gets harder. There’s an odd buzzing in his ears.

Out of the corner of his eye, a dark shape passes. It’s tall and thin, with long pale fingers, hooded-   

“Loki.” He starts, flinching away from Thor as he approaches from the side. “Loki, what’s gotten into you?”    

“You startled me,” He says, surprising himself at how rough his voice is.

Thor gives him an odd look. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think - I didn’t mean to scare you.” Thor scrutinizes him and it makes Loki’s skin scrawl. “Are you alright? You seem…you look pale.”

Loki nods tightly. “Yes. Fine.” His mouth is dry, heart thrumming in his chest.    

“Okay, let’s go find somewhere to sit.” They walk through the crowds, Loki trying to keep close. Someone bumps into him. The crowd thickens, and the gap between them increases. Another person knocks into him and his hand slips on the bottle. It falls to the cobblestones and shatters.

Thor turns at the sound, annoyance like thunder on his face. “Loki!” 

“Thor, something’s wrong,” He gasps, grabbing his brother’s wrist. “Something’s here, they’re coming for us. Following us.”    

“Loki, what are you talking about?” Thor looks around the square. “No one’s following us.”

Loki blinks rapidly. But he can feel it. “I don’t-” Thor takes his elbow, brow furrowed, and guides him away. The touch of Thor’s hand on his arm grounds him somewhat. He starts to feel a bit foolish, but then out of the corner of his eye, he sees them again. Shrouded figures, one tall and thin, the other broader. A third moving in the shadows.    

He has no doubt now, that the Children of Thanos have found him.    

“Thor, _stop_.” He cries, digging in his heels. “Thor, stop, we have to go back to the ship, we have to run.”    

“Loki, run from what? What are you talking about?”   

“They found me.” Thor looks around the square. His eyes don’t stop on anything. He doesn’t see. “Can’t you see them, the figures in the shadows?” 

“Loki, no.” _Loki, no_ , and the feeling of the Void sucking on his bones. “There’s no one there.” The sun suddenly feels oppressively hot on his skin. “Let’s just calm down, here, sit.” Thor pushes him onto a bench. “I’ll go get water, just wait here.”    

“No!” Loki grabs his hand. “No, stay, don’t-”   

“Loki, stop! Enough. It’s alright. There’s no one there.” Loki looks and sure enough, the shadows where figures had been are empty now. This only makes his heart rate increase.

“Let’s just go back to the ship.”

Thor’s frustration spikes. “We’ve been trapped on that ship for a month. We need fresh air and sunshine. Just wait here. Once you’ve had some water, and cooled down, you’ll see that you’re being foolish.”

Bitter tears fill Loki’s eyes. “You’re right, I’m a fool.” Thor's brow wrinkles. His hand is unsteady as he squeezes Loki’s shoulder.    

“Stay here,” He says and his voice is soft.    

Loki lets his magic travel through the ground, permeating the square. He feels for anything out of the ordinary, the touch of any other magic or fury.    

 _You were made to be ruled,_ something whispers in his ear and it breaks his concentration. The magic releases. The shadowy figures are back, floating indistinctly in the corners of his vision. Loki can’t breathe. He surges to his feet. He has to find Thor, he has to find Thor and _run_.    

“Watch it!” Someone shouts when he bumps into them. People are staring and Loki feels stripped naked, flayed by their gaze. He curls his arms around his stomach and stumbles back. Reason flees from his mind, replaced by a primal panic, the animalistic need to survive. He can’t _breathe_.    

“Loki!” Hands grasp his arms.

Loki meets his brother’s eyes. “Run, run, Thor.”    

“Loki, it’s okay-” Loki bodily drags him into an alleyway and Thor lets him. “Loki, calm down, breathe-”    

“I _can’t_ -”    

“Yes, you can. Loki, there’s no one here to hurt you, whatever you think is coming for you, they’re not here.” Thor presses him against the wall. “Loki, listen-” But he can’t. The buzzing in his ears grow louder. Spots appear in his vision as his world narrows to a pinpoint. The buzzing changes - it becomes the echo of his own screaming.    

_‘What a tool you will be,’ Thanos’ deep voice says. ‘Little Asgardian prince, made to be ruled. You will be my most prized soldier.’_

_The pain spiking sharp in his head as he looks into Thor’s blue eyes and doubts his mission._

_The Tesseract’s blue glow, burning through his body as he uses it to make a portal, as he brings it forth from his secret pocket and sees the fury on Thor’s face._

_He’s surrounded on all sides, hands grasping and tearing at his skin, devouring him. He is on Sakaar, he is on Sanctuary, he is in chains in Asgard, he doesn’t know where he is-_

“Loki!” Thor’s voice breaks through the fog. “Loki, listen to my voice. You need to breathe.” He chokes on nothing, unable to draw breath into his lungs. “Just like me, come on.” His hand is pressed to Thor’s chest and it rises and falls beneath his palm. “Like me. Come on, breathe in…” It’s hard, but he does it. One full, shuddering breath. Vision and feeling start to bleed back in.    

He’s sunk to the ground, knees drawn up to his chest. His hand is fisted tightly in his hair and tears drip wet down his cheeks. Thor is crouched before him, one hand gripping his bicep tightly, the other held over Loki’s pressed to his chest. He’s trembling, expression scared.    

Rationality returns. “What…what just happened?”

Thor relaxes a little. He moves his hand to Loki’s neck and Loki leans in to the touch. “You were…insensible. You didn’t know me, you couldn’t hear me. You were barely breathing.”    

“I thought I saw…” Loki’s breath is coming easier and it leaves him feeling floaty and weak, like a fever breaking. “The Titan called them his children. His generals. They obeyed him unquestioningly, in all things. They are…they are cruel and…they would…” He winces. The grief on Thor’s face tells him he does not have to continue.

“Loki, I didn’t see…”    

“You’re right.” Loki lets out a watery, hysterical laugh. “I don’t think they were there at all. I panicked, like a fool.”    

“No,” Thor says quietly. “Not a fool.” He settles down beside him, so their shoulders press together. “Loki, when you told me you had taken the Tesseract-” Loki winces. “I was angry. I thought you were planning to betray me, betray all of us. I did not think about how this was affecting you and I’m sorry.” Thor touches his cheek, turns his face towards him. “What Thanos did to you, whether or not you’re ready to talk about it in detail-”   

“I’m not-”    

“I know, and you don’t have to. But it’s affecting you. And I should have seen that. I have to do better for you, I know that. You really scared me, when you did not respond to my voice.” Thor sighs. “I was caught up in my own desire to escape the ship, to have some time outside. I was trying to bring logic to your fear, which only made it worse. I knew there was nothing in that square…but you didn’t. And I should have listened because it didn’t matter that there wasn’t anything there to hurt us, it mattered that you believed it. I should have protected you. I should have made you feel safe anyways.”  

“It seems like I’m not as free from the madness as I thought.”   

“You’re not mad. Loki, it would be truly madness if you weren’t hurt by what’s happened to you. And I promise, I’m going to do better. In the future, I promise that if you tell me that you don’t feel safe, I will listen and I will do what I can to make you feel safe again. Okay?”

Loki nods. “I know you’re trying your best, Thor.”

Thor looks suddenly weary, alarmingly old. “My best doesn’t feel like enough. And sometimes…I’m the one who wants to run.” He admits. “I gave up the throne and I spent four years traveling in search of the Stones and now I’m…I’m suddenly responsible for thousands of our survivors. I’m responsible for you. And I’m afraid too. I didn’t want…” He closes his eyes. “Just for one afternoon, I was selfish and childish and I just wanted to feel like it was in the old days.”    

“I understand.”    

“Do you?”

Loki looks at his hands, folded on his lap. “You know that I know what it’s like to want to run. But it seems like neither of us have anywhere else to go.”    

“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.” They sit quietly in that alleyway for a while longer. "And truly, if you don't feel safe, even if you know it's not real..."

"I'll tell you."

It doesn’t make everything right, but it makes things a little better. Thor releases some of his anger. They settle into something like a routine on the ship. Their relationship grows a little bit stronger, a little more normal.   

A few weeks later, Thor and Loki go with the Valkyrie to pick up machine parts on a satellite station in orbit around a moon. The station, crumbling and half rust and rock, feels a little too familiar. The proprietor is rough and rude and snarls at them. The Valkyrie is having fun, bantering with him. But the mechanic’s goons watch them with grim, dangerous expressions. There’s a loud noise from another part of the station, a metallic crash. It’s probably just something dropping, the normal noises of a station in orbit. But it’s enough to make panic stir in Loki’s chest.    

He waits, swallowing it down, but then the proprietor slams his fist on the table and shouts in the Valkyrie’s face as she laughs and Loki’s whole body tenses. There’s the far-off sound of screaming in his ears.   

“Thor,” He whispers, tangling his fingers together. “Thor, I don’t feel-”

Thor puts a hand on his back. “Okay. Come on.” He quietly lets the Valkyrie know they’re leaving, and the princes slip away. Thor’s hand doesn’t leave his back. The fear doesn’t go away completely, but it’s manageable and when he surrenders to it, letting the panic attack overtake him, he does it sitting on his own bed, with his brother’s hands cradling his. He feels safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, y'all should have known you were going to get a long End Note for this one. 
> 
> First of all, my god did they actually have an honest emotional conversation? Perish the thought! 
> 
> Second, I feel like Thor might get some flak for his reactions here, and the way he doesn't listen at first in '7. Kidnapped' (Though there Loki isn't actually doing a very good job saying 'I don't feel safe' which would trigger the promise, instead keeps saying 'I don't trust this situation' to which Thor is just like 'cool you're being paranoid.' It's not until that last argument that he reminds Thor of his promise.) 
> 
> Anyways, what's good to keep in mind for Thor's failings in this regard are: 
> 
> 1\. Thor makes mistakes, but loves Loki and is trying his best and  
> 2\. Older siblings are not parents. 
> 
> Why is that relevant here? Because Thor is suffering too and he’s trying his best but ultimately was not expecting to ever be in this position. If Thor was Loki’s parent, yes, he should probably take more blame for failing as Loki’s caretaker, but he’s his brother. I tried to make it clear that Thor is unhappy on the ship and all he wants is to be out in the sun for a while and he deserves to have those desires. He’s a brand new king who, up until Ragnarök, was not actually expecting to sit on the throne anytime soon. He was pretty independent, traveling around the galaxy looking for infinity stones and then - boom! World ending, you are now responsible for a ship full of refugees and your emotionally unstable younger brother who you’re still a little concerned might stab you in the back, literally and figuratively. 
> 
> He also, growing up, had no way of expecting this kind of relationship with Loki. They seem to be fairly close in age (I usually head-canon approximately 3-4 ‘Earth equivalent’ years difference, to reconcile all the odd numbers we’re given and the ‘we were eight’ from Ragnarok), Thor expects that he and Loki will grow up and be adults together. He has no way of expecting that Loki is going to have a massive mental breakdown, go evil, fake his own death (twice), and come back fragile and unhinged and needing a type of care that Thor doesn’t understand, or really know how to give him. And that Loki doesn’t know how to ask for. I think like 80% of the time, they’re both doing okay. Loki’s holding it together and Thor’s taking care of him, but sometimes Thor just wants a break, just wants to be a little selfish and sometimes Loki needs a little extra assistance keeping himself together and in really, really shitty cases those two things coincide and bad things happen. They're communications disasters.
> 
> And I think this is not the most reliably narrated chapter. Loki's mind and anxiety may be blowing some of Thor's reactions out of proportion.
> 
> Have I over-explained this? Probably. Am I projecting some of my own insecurities and getting weirdly defensive of a character that probably doesn't need this much defending? Also yes. So fun. Is this my longest End Note? Definitely. 
> 
> Will we get to see the Tesseract conversation? Also yes! (Or at least the start of it.) And it's coming up, that chapter goes up on Wednesday. The next few days will be pretty plot-y in fact. Yay!
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	14. Torture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki & Thor. Sanctuary. Warnings: just for torture (I know I don't usually tag what's obvious by the chapter title, but I figured I would reiterate. This chapter's not too explicit though.) 
> 
> The tables are turned. Help arrives from a very, very unexpected source.

Thanos’s torturers figure it out in the end.    

They figure out that Loki is beyond physical torture. They had done their jobs too thoroughly last time. But then they consult with Thanos and he knows exactly what to do.    

Loki will not react to his own torture anymore. He does, however, react to Thor’s.    

The first time, he lasts about two minutes, bound fast to a chair while Thor howls, before he breaks. He struggles to get out of the chair, twisting in his bonds.    

“Please, please stop,” He shouts, over Thor’s pained cries. “ _Stop!_ ” They don’t gag him, like they had Thor. Evidently they like hearing him beg. It amuses them.    

This time, Loki is already shaking when they lead him to the chair and tie him down.    

“Brother,” Thor says. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Loki just shakes uncontrollably. They whip him, flaying the skin from his back. Then they bring a stove, full of burning coals, and heat a metal bar.    

“Are you afraid of fire, little frost giant?” One of them taunts, holding the red hot poker up to his eye. They press it to his cheek and he yelps. They leave him with the burned stripe on his cheek and turn the iron on Thor.    

“Please, I’ll give you whatever you want, just _stop_ ,” Loki wails. “Stop this.” They don’t. They never do. “I don’t understand _what do you want from me!?_ ”    

“Enough.” The torturers are silenced by a deep, tinny voice. Loki freezes in place.    

“No,” He whispers. “No. No, no, no, no-” Nebula stalks into the room. Of all his tormentors, she had always been the most clever. Perhaps because Thanos had been so inventive in his own tortures of her, replacing her body parts with mechanics at his will.    

“Leave us,” Nebula says.    

“Why has he sent you to replace us? Is the Titan disappointed in our work?”    

“Father thinks you could do better. That you are doing well, but he wishes the prisoners broken faster.” Thor struggles to lift his head, blood dripping from his hair. He looks to Loki, a question in his expression. Loki tries to fix his features to something reassuring, but his fear of Nebula supplants any ability of his to be reassuring. “Go!” Nebula insists and they reluctantly leave her. She picks up a blade from the table of instruments and goes to Loki.    

Loki flinches away, recoiling from her. She brings up the knife and Loki braces for the cut, but it doesn’t come. Instead his bonds fall away. She has sliced through the ropes fixing him to the chair.    

“We don’t have much time,” She says. “Thanos could be back any moment.”

Loki blinks at her. “What are you doing?”    

“You need to go. You can use the Tesseract to open a portal, yes?” Loki nods. Nebula goes to Thor, unlocking the chains holding him up. Loki rushes forward to catch him as he collapses. “When Thanos returns, he is planning on taking the Stone from it. This is our last chance. Use it to connect with the Mind Stone, go there and warn them about what Thanos is planning. Come.” Thor is barely conscious, but Loki manages to support his weight as they stumble through the corridors.    

“Why are you doing this?” He gasps.    

“I am going to kill my father,” She says. “That gets harder with each stone he gains. Rest assured, he will pay for what he has done to you and the others.”    

“Is this some new torment, some lie to lull us into a trap?”

Nebula rounds on him. “I hate him more than anyone, I care not if you do not believe me. This is your one chance. You can take it, or you can die here. It is your choice.”

This still could be some plot. But Loki doesn’t think he has a choice not to take the risk. “Where is the Tesseract?”    

“Here.” She leads them into a room. The Tesseract sits on a pedestal, blue and glowing and indifferent. “Work quickly.” Loki takes it in one hand, his other occupied holding Thor up. It knows him after he twice has used it to create a portal, so it responds, even to his weak magic. It pulls on him, _wanting_ to be used, and he reaches out for its connection to the mind stone.    

It could be his own weakness, or the distance between the space and mind stones, he’s not sure, but the portal is slow to form and rapidly disintegrating. He pushes harder, trying to stabilize it. He hears a crash from the hallway that nearly breaks his concentration.    

“Quickly! Go _now!_ ” Nebula shouts behind him. The portal’s not perfect, not half as stable as it should be. But he’s running out of time and strength. He just has to hope it’s enough. He tightens his grip on Thor, closes his eyes, and lets the Tesseract’s power fold over them.    

They hit the ground hard. Very hard. But there’s grass brushing his cheek and dew beneath his fingers. He opens his eyes to the dark night skies of Midgard. He is exhausted, drained, and aching ferociously. But they were on Midgard.    

“Thor,” He croaks. Thor is unconscious beside him, breathing shallowly. “Thor!” There is no response.    

In the distance, the sound of a propulsion jet.    
   

“You have disappointed me, daughter.” Nebula hangs suspended from wires on the ceiling, immobile. “A spy? Really? And now you have lost me the Asgardians. You wound me, Nebula.” He clenches his fist and she is pulled apart, screaming. The new blue Stone sparkles in the gauntlet. “I would end you. But I suspect you will be useful to me in time. Especially if I am to find your sister.”    

He leaves her then, in the hands of the torturers, who are instructed to send periodic currents of electricity through her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Et voilà! And then Tony arrives and scoops them up and you know the rest. (At least...most of the rest. ;-) ) 
> 
> So we see how the princes get back to Earth. And tomorrow, we're all going to get timeline whiplash by going from this, one of the furthest along, to one of the earliest, going all the way back to the early days of the Ark (and the start of the Tesseract conversation.) 
> 
> A side note: I turned in my MA thesis yesterday, which was a...rough process. I started to really hate my writing in the middle there. But, honestly, if you've commented on this, given kudos, or even just silently read and appreciated, know that that seriously helped keep me moderately sane during a crazy last month. So thank you! Thank you thank you thank you! <3 
> 
> And now I'll have more time to work on the sequel! ;-) 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com (though I'm taking a little screen-break in the wake of finishing my thesis. I'm going to read Novels, imagine that?)


	15. Manhandling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Loki. The Ark. Warnings: mentions of past torture, mentions of past suicide attempt.
> 
> There's something from Wanda's vision that haunts Thor. He just needs one more piece to put the whole puzzle together.

_You’re a destroyer, Odinson._    

The power, the spark, goes out as soon as quickly as it came. Heimdall is gone, but the dancers still writhe. Hands are on his back, dragging him down, dragging him deeper into Hel.    

A dark, hooded figure cuts across his vision. The hands leave him and he follows the cloaked figure as it moves through the rough carved halls of Hel.    

“Wait!” He cries and his voice echoes. “Stop!” Eventually, the person does stop, in a wide cavern. They step up onto an altar.    

The figure turns, and with long, pale fingers, draws the hood back from their face.

“Loki,” Thor breathes.

Loki is ghost white, looking at him with wide green eyes. “Ask me again.”    

“Loki, what happened to you? How did you come here?”    

“ _Ask me again_.” Loki reaches out for him in desperation. “ _Ask me again!_ ”    

“Ask you _what_ , Loki! You have to tell me what you want!”    

“Ask me again.”

Thor is going to go mad, hot frustrated tears coming to his eyes. “Say something else, say _anything_ else.”    

“Ask me again.” When Loki opens his mouth to speak this time, blood blooms on his lips. “Ask me again.”    

“No, no, no, no, no, no-” The front of his shirt grows wet, spreading from the center. His hands reach out for Thor, straining.    

“Ask me again.” The veins of his throat turn black.    

“Loki, don’t-”    

“Ask me again.”    

Thor wakes with a gasp the second Loki’s knees give way.    

It takes him a long moment to get control of himself, hand pressed over his face as he breathes hard. The vision that Wanda had pried from his mind haunted him still. He had had nightmares of it while on his quest, before they were supplanted by the prophetic nightmares of Ragnarök. They’d returned with a vengeance on the Statesman - the Ark, as Bruce had started calling it. And they feel more real than ever.    

But Loki is on his side, safe and whole, breathing evenly in sleep. He is as close to the edge of the bed as he can be, as far away from Thor as possible. Sharing the bed had been an utilitarian decision. The ship was tightly packed, some of the common folk living seven or eight to a room, and Thor wouldn’t hear arguments that he should have his own quarters as king.     

The brothers had shared a bed countless nights in the past. But after all that had happened between them, the arrangement was awkward. Loki would lie, stiff and tense, until Thor fell asleep, then somehow always ended up on the very edge of the mattress, perilously close to tumbling off the edge.    

Thor gently moves him away from the drop, settling him on his back.    

There’s no stain in his shirt, no black lines twisting up his neck. He breathes smoothly, looks peaceful. All is normal.    

 _Ask me again_.  
   

Ask _what_ again? The question dogs him throughout the day. What could the vision-Loki _possibly_ want him to ask again.    

He considers briefly, that it’s a product of his own mind. But the rest of what he learned in Wanda’s induced nightmare - his powers, the end of Asgard, the stones - all that had been true. Why would the last part be any different?    

He watches Loki through dinner.    

Loki catches him. “You’re staring.”

“Am I?”    

“Think I’m going to run away, again, brother?” Loki flicks him on the forehead. “Ah. See? Still here.” Then he turns and goes.    

 _Ask me again_.  
   

He is right on the cusp of it, he knows it. _Ask me again_. What had he asked, and Loki not answered? What is it that he must ask again?    

Loki in the dream never says anything else. He just says _ask me again_ over and over as the Kursed’s wound opens on his chest and Thor wakes just before he collapses.   

He pours himself a drink and looks out at the wide window on the stars, and thinks.

 _Ask me again._  
   

It comes to him in a flash. Heart pounding, he sets his drink aside and goes to their room. He’s shaking by the time he slips inside. He knows what he has to ask. He fears it.    

He grabs Loki’s arm roughly, dragging him up. Loki wakes with a soft, surprised cry as Thor pulls him from the room before he can disturb the others.    

“Thor, what are you doing?”   

“We need to talk.”   

“Norns, can we not do it at a reasonable hour? I was _sleeping_.”    

“I was not and we need to talk.”    

“Dammit, Thor.” They reach the bar and Thor lets him go. He staggers a little, leaning against the table for support. “What has gotten into you?”   

“I’ve been dreaming about you, you know?”

Loki blinks. “I’m flattered?”    

“On Midgard, there was this witch. Wanda. She induced nightmares, pulled from our worst memories to torment us.”    

“That’s rude.”    

“I saw you.”    

“Of course you did,” Loki sighs. “Well? What so horrified you about me? Was it our fight on the bifrost? Or the moment you learned what I truly was-”    

“It wasn’t like that! It was…for me it wasn’t like the others, it wasn’t just a nightmare, I saw things. Like my dreams of Ragnarök.”

Loki huffs. “You really are Yggdrasil’s worst seer, aren’t you? Is that why you woke me? To help you interpret your vision? You know, you could just _learn_ -”

“You appear to me, hooded. We walk to a stone room and you turn to me and say “ask me again.’” Loki’s brow furrows. “Ask me again, that’s all, over and over again. No matter how much I scream at you, _beg_ you to say anything else, all you ever say is ‘ask me again.’ Then…the wound in your chest. The Kursed’s wound.” Loki touches his chest absently with the tips of his fingers, then starts pacing, hands twisting together. “When I first had the vision, and many times when it appeared in my dreams, I still thought you were dead. I was so frustrated I could scream. There was something I had to ask you, and it was too late.” Thor moves, putting himself between Loki and the door. Loki has a look about him like he wants to bolt. “And now, on the ship, I’ve been so frustrated that I couldn’t think of the question.”    

“Well? I’m assuming this little midnight chat means you’ve figured it out.”    

“I have. So Loki, who controls the would-be king?”    

Whatever Loki thought he was going to say, it evidently wasn’t _that_. The color drains from his face.    

“What?”

Thor grabs his arms. “Who controls the would-be king?”   

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Loki won’t look him in the eye, trying to step out of his hands. Thor won’t let go, gripping him so tight he’s probably leaving bruises in the shape of his fingers.    

“I asked you that, when I first saw you on Midgard, during your aborted invasion. I asked who controlled you. Who commanded your armies-”    

“Let go of me-”    

“-who gave you the scepter, who told you about the Tesseract-”    

“-Thor, _release me!_ ”   

“No! Who held you after your fall? Where were you?” He shakes Loki. “Tell me!”    

“I can’t!”    

“Loki, you have to tell me! I know it has to do with the Infinity Stones, I know it has to explain why so many of them have appeared in such a short time, I _know_ Loki, and I have to ask you again.” Loki is trembling, still not looking at him, leaning away. “Who controls the would-be king? Loki, _who_ -”    

“Thanos! His name is Thanos!” Loki’s breaths come as heaves but once his mouth opens the words spill out rapid fire. “He is also know as the Mad Titan, Death’s Lover, he has dozens of Children who are just as cruel as he and twice as creative, he lives on a great black ship outside of the Nine that he calls Sanctuary.” Tears drip down his cheeks. “Let me go.”    

“No. What does he want? The Stones?” Loki nods.    

“He seeks the Stones, I know not for what end.”    

“How did you come to be under his control?” Loki shakes his head desperately.    

“I was not under his control, I…I…I believed it would work. I was cast out from the bifrost, cast out of Asgard, and I fell endlessly through the Void before he found me. He took me from that torment and he…shaped me. Made me…part of me wants to say stronger but in the years since, I’ve learned which parts of my mind aren’t my own anymore. He made me harder. He made me colder, which is a pretty impressive thing to do to a frost giant,” His breath hitches. “I wasn’t even cast from the bifrost, was I? When I saw you on Midgard, I truly believed you had thrown me off. Pushed me into the Void. But that’s not right. I let go. I remember that clearly now. Letting go. I ended Loki of Asgard. I chose my fate. I chose Thanos.”    

“What did he-”    

“He trained me for the invasion. He made sure…I was on the same page. He made sure I was ready, could resist…temptation. Then he gave me the scepter and sent me to Earth and…and…promised I could rule on Earth and I thought if it wasn’t Asgard, at least it wasn’t Jotunheim…”    

“Loki, he was never going to let you rule, you know that right?” Thor releases his arms, cupping his neck instead. “He would have taken it from you and killed you once you were of no more use to him.” Loki lets out a sob that’s half a laugh.    

“I think I did know that. Deep down. But I didn’t know what else to do.”    

“You could have told me, you could have answered when I asked-”    

“I wasn’t under his control, I invaded Earth of my own free will-”    

“That’s debatable-”

Loki holds up a finger. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have ways of making sure I did not stray from the path.” He lets that hang for a moment. “I will say nothing else of this matter.”    

 _Ask me again._ There are so many more questions he has now, all stemming from the confirmation that his brother was under another’s command when he invaded Earth. Those will be answered in time. But something more eats at him. Something more feels unanswered.    

“If there is anything else you have to tell me, you should do so now.”

Loki looks at him for a long moment and Thor is prepared for him to turn away. He doesn’t.    

“I took something. From the vaults. After, after the fire started.”    

That hateful blue glow washes over them.    

Thor steps back, his heart sinking.    

“Loki, no.”   

“I had to! I had no choice. If I had left it there, he would have found it in a moment, it would have been entirely unprotected.” Loki holds it out. “Take it, take it. I didn’t keep it to use it, I kept it because I couldn’t leave it.” Thor takes it and it hums. He doesn’t know what to believe anymore.  

“You weren’t planning on using it to run?” _I trust you, you betray me, round and round and round and round…_    

“I swear, Thor. I swear.” But then why hadn’t he revealed its presence two weeks ago? Why had he lied and hidden it away?   

“Stay here,” The weariness in his own voice surprises him. “I am going to wake the others. We have to talk about this.”    

He takes the Tesseract and leaves Loki to sink to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the Tesseract conversation. 
> 
> I really like to imagine Thor as Yggdrasil’s worst seer. Like, he has the raw power but not the patience or desire to do anything with it, but sometimes he’s just like ‘oh huh I was totally dreaming about this calamity for months, can't believe it came true, weird’ and Loki’s in the background like ‘YOU DUMB WITCH.’ I think it vaguely makes sense with the in-text clues: his Wanda vision is the only one that contains actual information, so she could have triggered a real prophecy whereas on the others she just drew upon their worst fears, out of all the Odinkids he's the only one blood related to Frigga (who is usually portrayed as a seer, but I can't remember if that's actually confirmed in the movies or just a fanon extrapolation from mythology), and he has prophetic dreams of Ragnarök. I'm going with it. It's probably one of my personal favorite headcanons. (It comes up once again in a future chapter, and I'm currently desperately trying to shoehorn it into the sequel because I have a fun scene already half-written.)
> 
> This is also filling in the cut Loki cameo from Age of Ultron. Loki was supposed to appear in Thor’s vision, and the Internet has theorized that the hooded figure the camera lingers on for a moment is the start of the cut appearance, but apparently test audiences were confused and thought he was somehow behind Ultron and not just a vision, but I think it makes sense for him to appear, and to give Thor the information (if cryptic) to put together the whole ‘stones + the one who seeks them’ equation.
> 
> (Another fun naming note: Something I seriously appreciated about Ragnarok was that they actually kept the distinction between witch/sorcerer. At first the scene with the "How was I supposed to know, I'm not a witch" "Then why do you dress like one?" might seem odd, because Loki clearly practices magic, but: a witch (völva) is a seer/seeress, while a sorcerer (seidmadur) practices more generalized ritual magic. Loki is a sorcerer, not a witch. Thor is, in my little headcanon at least, a witch but not really a sorcerer. Though I'm not as committed to this distinction as Taika Watiti and there are a couple chapters of this where I'm just like...eh, I want to call Loki a witch. I have a permit. (It just says I do what I want.)) 
> 
> I should probably start citing some of my sources like the good little grad student I am: a lot of my information, including today's, comes from the Penguin Classics edition of 'The Sagas of Icelanders' which, if you've never read them, are amazing and this edition has a really helpful appendix and glossary. A teaser, one of my favorite lines: "Not everyone agreed that he was not a shape-shifter." These stories are gold. Gold. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	16. Bedridden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Tony Stark & Loki. House Avengers. Warnings: past torture. 
> 
> Thor wakes up but something is missing. Tony thought his night couldn't get any weirder. 
> 
> (aka their first night in House Avengers)

Thor drags himself into consciousness. It takes a while. He drifts, understanding vaguely that he’s in a bed, under fluorescent lights, but then he’s dragged under again. When he finally manages to blink his eyes open, he finds none other than Tony Stark sitting in a chair next to his bed. 

“We made it, then,” He groans, startling Tony. “Where are we, New York?”    

“Not the city. The compound, upstate.” Tony is staring at him. “What the _hell_ happened to you?”

Thor chuckles softly. “You have no idea, Stark. It’s been a very, very strange journey.” There are drugs in his system, painkillers and muscle relaxants, slow to release their grip on his mind. They’re making everything about the last two years feel incredibly, _absurdly_ funny.    

“I’m sure it was. And once you’re a bit better I’d love to hear your version, I’m sure it’s far more reasonable than the absolute bullshit your brother’s been spinning, but just focus on resting and-” Thor is suddenly stone cold sober. His heart races.    

“Where is he?” He says, voice low and dangerous. “Stark, where is my brother?!?”    

“Okay, okay, chill! He’s under guard, don’t worry he won’t escape.”    

“It’s not his _escape_ I’m worried about, is he alright? Was he hurt?” Tony looks surprised. “Stark, what have you done-”   

“Nothing, we haven’t done anything to him. Relax, Thor. He was only slightly injured by your crash landing, we just talked to him, got the story, or at least the story according to his mind which is still definitely not firmly placed in the realm of reality, and he’s been left alone.”

Thor scrubs a hand over his face. “Take me to him.” He makes an effort to sit up but a sharp pain in his back and chest stops him.    

“You’re in no condition to be wandering around, buddy. We can wait until you’re better than take you to his cell-”    

“Stark!” A surge of rage flows through him, but it only leaves him fatigued. He flops back against the pillows. “Bring him to me, now.”    

“Thor, be reasonable-”   

“Stark, you must bring him to me.”   

“He’s dangerous, we can’t just let him out of-”   

“Yes, he’s dangerous, but, he’s not plotting anything, Stark, he’s…he’s _hurting._ ” Thor’s last clear memory of his brother was of Loki bound and weeping as he was tortured. There are other, vague flashes, Loki’s arm around his torso, the glow of the Tesseract, but the last clear image that fills his head is Loki’s horrified and devastated face. “He needs me.” Okay, perhaps Thor didn’t want to admit that it was really the other way around. Tony just looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “Please just bring him to me.” There is silence for a minute.    

“What happened to your eye?” Tony asks quietly.    

“My sister put it out.”    

“And you caused the apocalypse to stop her?”    

“Yes. Ragnarök. Asgard is gone.”    

“Where did you find Bruce Banner?”    

“He was fighting in the ring on the planet Sakaar. It was ruled by a tyrant called the Grandmaster. Hela - our sister - had thrown Loki and me from the bifrost and we landed there. That’s what happens, lost things land there. We escaped with the help of a Valkyrie.” Thor’s chest tightens. He still doesn’t know what’s become of her, or Heimdall, or the rest of the Asgardian refugees.    

“Where’s Bruce now?”    

“I don’t know. Loki and I were taken captive by Thanos - the Mad Titan, the one who had sent Loki to Earth with the Chitauri. We had a plan, I don’t know if it worked. I don’t even know how long it’s been since Thanos took us.”    

Tony blinks. “I guess maybe Loki was telling the truth,” He mutters.    

“Will you bring him to me then?”

Tony sighs. “Fine. I’ll arrange for a visit. I can’t make any promises. If he acts up, we’ll have to put him back in the cell.”

Thor nods and settles in. “Fine.”    

He has to wait about thirty minutes, counting down every second. Finally the door opens and there is his brother, flanked by two guards. His hands are bound behind his back, his eyes are distant, unfocused, and his face pale, but he appears to be mostly uninjured. Tony follows them, dismissing the guards once they’re through the door.

Loki stumbles a little at Tony’s hand on his back, pushing him towards Thor’s bed.    

“Brother,” Thor says softly.    

“Thor,” He breathes.    

“Unbind him.”        

“Sorry big guy, we can’t take any chances. The cuffs stay on.” Thor lets out a frustrated breath but doesn’t argue. He has to choose his battles.  

“Come here, Loki.” He beckons his brother forward. Loki sits on the edge of Thor’s bed, shifting awkwardly with his bound hands.    

“I’m sorry,” Loki says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I should have been more careful. The portal was collapsing so fast, I didn’t know what else to do.”    

“It’s okay, it wasn’t your fault.” Thor touches his knee, relaxing at the contact, the feeling of solidity under his hand. “You did well getting us out of there. We’re free now, thanks to you.”    

“Free.” Loki lets out a sob.    

“We’re away from Thanos.”

Loki shakes his head. “I’ll never be free from him, I’ll never be away.”    

“Look at me, look at me, Loki.” Loki’s shining eyes lock with his. “It’s going to be okay. Come here.” He pulls Loki gently down onto his chest, tucking his head under his chin. He pets back his hair as Loki shudders against him, hiding his face. “I’m here.”    

They fall into the same position, curling together like they did for so many nights in the cell aboard Sanctuary. It’s practically habit now, even if Loki can’t embrace back because of his bonds. Despite it, Thor finds himself relaxing. Tony stares at them with naked shock on his face.    

“Is anyone going to explain to me how tall-dark-and-crazy went from insane megalomaniac trying to conquer the planet, to _dead_ , to…this?”    

“It’s a very long story, Stark. Tomorrow, I’ll try to explain tomorrow.”

Tony looks a bit uncomfortable. “Okay, I’ll just call the guards back and-”   

“Stark, you’re my friend, but I warn you,” Thor glares at him. “I may be bedridden but I will not allow anyone to take him away from me. If you want to take him away, you will have to come and remove him from my arms yourself.”

There is a look on Tony’s face like a door slamming shut. He pauses another moment, then nods. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” He turns and leaves. Tony Stark knows how to pick his battles too. A little more of the fight leaves Thor and he buries his nose in Loki’s hair.

“We made it,” He whispers. “We survived.”    

“So far,” Loki whispers back. “You’ll pay for what you just said to Stark. He won’t forget that you threatened him to defend me.”    

“I don’t care. He’ll understand, once I explain what happened.”   

“I already did. I told the truth, all of it, I swear, brother. And he said I was mad. That I was spinning lies and he would not allow me to put a spell on him. Even if you confirm all I’ve said, they will say I’ve enchanted you.” Loki shifts, turning his head to press his ear over Thor’s heart. He sighs. “I don’t know what to do.” Thor just sighs.    

“We’ll figure it out,” He says. “Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony is so confused. 
> 
> This is really the start of the tension between them. Like, maybe if this initial interaction had gone differently Tony would have been more receptive to what they were telling him re: Thanos, wouldn't have felt like it was Thor & Loki vs him (which felt a little too familiar). But obviously that's not Thor's fault, he's like just waking up to the realization he isn't going to be tortured anymore, can't really think outside of his immediate needs. :-( Everything is sad. 
> 
> Tomorrow we're back to the Ark for...wait for it...a two part-er that...WAIT FOR IT...follows directly one after the other *in chronological order*. Gasp! See, I can write things in order, too. And while there's a small cliffhanger, it gets resolved the very next day so hopefully you'll all forgive me for all the other terrible things I've put you all through. ;-) 
> 
> Also the answer to Thor's "I don't know how long it's been since we were captured" is 3 weeks. I am finally figuring out a concrete timeline. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	17. Drugged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki & The Valkyrie. The Ark. Warnings: nonconsensual drug use. 
> 
> It was a fun night, until they realized something was wrong with their drinks.

Though she won't admit it out loud, the Valkyrie actually enjoys hanging out with Loki. Especially on the planets and stations where the primary occupation is pleasure and gambling. He’s just as bad a cheat at cards as she is, and surprisingly good at it, for a prince. He likes chaos, and likes being the source of it. It was cathartic. They were letting off steam and tension and doing it without putting Asgard in too much jeopardy. Win, win.    

That particular night had been fairly tame. They had hustled a few Xandarians out of some credits at the gaming tables and hadn’t even gotten into a brawl over it. So they go to the bar.    

“We’re going to have to figure out how to replenish the stocks on the ships soon,” The Valkyrie says, looking fondly at her bottle.    

“The Grandmaster’s supplies were extensive. I can’t believe it’s taken this long for us to even get close to running out.”    

“We’ll have to convince your brother and the Watcher that it’s a necessary expensive.”

Loki smiles. "Or, we could just tell them _after_ we’ve already acquired the supplies. Plus, they can’t argue if we’ve used funds we’ve stolen off of a few imperial fools.”    

“They can try, you’ll know they’ll try.”    

“They would put up a token fight, but Thor at least imbibes just as much as the rest of us. Besides, it is a necessary expense - you, for one, would probably drop dead in a week flat if you were cut off.” The Valkyrie shrugs, but agrees. “And it is a much needed relaxant after stressful days on the ship.”    

“Could we use it to bribe the authorities on Midgard when we arrive?”    

“Doubtful. They are unlikely to be swayed by bribery with alien liquor. Maybe if we had some usable currency they might be amenable but…I’m not hopeful.”    

“Do you know what you’re going to do yet?”

Loki sighs. “I don’t. They will be calling for my head. Even with Thor and Bruce vouching for me.”    

“Are you going to leave before we land?”

Loki is quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t…I don’t want to leave, but nor do I want to be locked up again.”    

“What about the,” She wiggles her fingers.    

“Shapeshifting? Yes, I think that’s the most likely solution, as silly as it may be. What do you think the Midgard authorities would say if Thor showed up to all the negotiations with a snake wrapped around his shoulders?” She laughs.    

“Why does it have to be a snake? I think you would make a very cute cat. Or maybe a hamster.”    

“It will probably be a glamour, of another human. We’ll have to make up an identity for me.”   

“Ooh! That’s going to be a fun game. I think we need more drinks for this.” She signals the bartender.    

They keep drinking, coming up with wilder and wilder stories for the false Asgardian identity they would have to cook up for Loki. They’re laughing and having a good time.    

Until Loki falters, shaking his head like he’s trying to clear it.    

“Hey, you okay?” She nudges him lightly with her boot.    

“I’m fine,” He says, but it’s a little slurred.    

“What, can’t hold your liquor all of a sudden?”

He scoffs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s swaying. Something feels wrong.    

“Hey. Loki, look at me.” She grasps his chin. He takes an extra second to focus on her face. “Your pupils are totally blown.” He jerks out of her grip.

“I’m _fine_.”

But she’s starting to feel it too. A pull on her limbs, something to slow her down, drag her under. She glances at the drinks. “Fuck. We have to get out of here.”    

“What?” It’s affecting him faster than her. Maybe he had started drinking the contaminated liquor earlier than she did. Maybe it was her age that protected her. Who knows.   

She just knows that someone put _something_ in their drinks. Someone put something in their drinks and they had to get the _fuck_ out of there.   

“Come on, highness, time to go.” She grabs his elbow and tugs. He follows without question. She’s slurring her words now, but keeps talking. “We’ll just get out of here before they come back and we’ll let this shit get out of our system and it’s fine-” Loki stumbles, catching himself on the wall. The Valkyrie steadies him.    

“A moment…just a moment,” He breathes.    

“Highness, we don’t have much time.” She’s getting dizzy. The drugs are starting to drag her under too. She wraps an arm around his waist and drags and he stumbles after her.    

They make it about ten feet before her feet tangle together and she doesn’t react fast enough to catch them. They fall hard and Loki doesn’t move. The Valkyrie fights to get at least to her hands and knees but her head spins and the world feels foggy. She manages to rise to her elbows.    

“Shit, highness, _Loki_. Come on, wake up.” He doesn’t react, not to her words nor her shaking. He’s out cold. She leans against him. At least he’s still breathing, his chest rising and falling slowly, so it doesn’t seem like it’s going to kill them immediately. Whoever drugged them might, though. “ _Fuck_.” She drops her head and a single, panicked sob tears itself from her throat.    

There are footsteps approaching. She raises her head as much as she’s able, trying to guess who it was. The Xandarians were her best bet. They had surrendered the credits the Valkyrie’d cheated them out of a little too easily. They could have bribed the bartender to drug them so they could return to steal back their money. Maybe rough them up a bit. Worst case scenario, try to kill them.    

When the feet came into view, she wishes it was the Xandarians. One pair large and booted. The other clad in sandals with nails painted bright turquoise.    

“One-four-two, I can’t believe I’ve finally run into you,” The Grandmaster says, his smile sharp and dangerous.   

“Caught up, more like.” Topaz scowls down at her.    

“You’ve really disappointed me, one-four-two.” The Grandmaster shakes his head. “Running off with my champion. Conspiring to start a rebellion. You’ve been a very, very, _very_ bad girl.”    

They were _fucked_. That was her last coherent thought before the drug finally won and she blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The return of the Grandmaster, who's not too pleased. Apologies for the cliffhanger but as I mentioned yesterday, it gets resolved tomorrow with '18. Hostage' so you don't have to wait too long! 
> 
> Tomorrow's prompt was one of the ones that kind of got away from me, got a little weird, so heads up. ;-) 
> 
> The fun fact for this chapter is I put in the line 'Maybe it was her age that protected her' because I remembered something about Asgardians growing stronger with age and then I was like...no, no that's the vampires on True Blood. I'd been rewatching True Blood and mixed them up. Left it in because, hey, it also could make sense for Asgardians. 
> 
> Happy Friday!
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	18. Hostage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki & the Valkyrie, very, very, *very* dubiously consensual Loki/Grandmaster. The Ark. Warnings: nonconsensual drug use, sexual assault, nonconsensual voyeurism, mentions of past/possible future rape. Just generally lots of consent issues in this one, really balances that knife edge of dub/nonconsensual. 
> 
> (Should you want to skip the most explicit parts skip from when the Grandmaster returns the second time to the next line break. It's not particularly graphic, but the implication is clear.) 
> 
> Directly follows from '17. Drugged.' The Valkyrie and Loki have been captured by the Grandmaster. The Grandmaster wants many things.

The Valkyrie wakes with the feeling of cotton in her mouth. And filling her head. When she tries to move it, her neck spasms and her head throbs. She hasn’t been this hungover in an age. She groans, squeezing her eyes shut tighter.    

“Thank the Norns, I was beginning to think you were dead.” Thoughts filter through the fog, revealing the voice’s identity. Lackey. Loki. Prince. Drinking buddy. Drinking…   

Her eyes snap open and, despite the pain, she raises her head. “Fuck, oh fuck, we’re so fucked.”   

“Say it again, I don’t think I understand the gravity of our situation.”

She tugs her bonds. They’re tied to chairs back to back, their wrists bound to each other on the sides of the chair frame, her ankles crossed and tied together, and a coil of rope around their chests. The knots don’t budge when she tugs with all her strength. She huffs in frustration.    

“ _Do_ you understand the gravity of our situation? Know who-”    

“He came by a little while ago, when I was starting to wake up,” Loki says quietly. “I think he’s got a camera on us.”    

“Shit. What are we going to do?”    

“I don’t know.”   

“Helpful, highness.”    

“What do you want me to say? I could curse more, like you, but that won’t get us any closer to escaping.”    

“Are we going to escape? Why hasn’t he just melted us by now?”    

“I don’t think he has a melt stick on hand.”   

“Well, he could have just cut our throats.”   

“Don’t give him any ideas.” Loki sighs. “There are things he wants. I think he needs us alive to get them.”    

“Uh huh,” The Valkyrie says. “Was he specific about those desires?”    

“…some,” He says, very quietly.    

“Well, that’s good. He’ll keep us alive for a while longer at least, Gast was never one for necrophilia. Though who knows these days.” Loki doesn’t answer. She feels him tense. “Hey. I was joking. Was there anything else he wanted?”    

“Money, I think. I was still a bit fuzzy, he wasn’t really making that much sense. Going on and on about the rebellion, about ‘his champion’ and the ‘seductive lord of thunder,’ I don’t know. Through the rambling, I think he means to extort Thor for our safe and somewhat whole return.”    

“He knows we’re practically dead broke, right?”    

“I tried to tell him that. That’s when the ‘oh, sweetie, you _do_ have something I want’ started and he kind of lost his train of thought.”    

“Did he touch you?” Loki doesn’t answer. They say nothing for a minute. Valkyrie tests the ties as her head clears some more. She feels one start to give as the drugs gradually filter out of her system.    

“If we wait long enough,” She whispers. “I think I can break these. Then we’ll get out of here. What about your magic?”    

“Still out of reach. I don’t know if it’s the drugs or the bonds, or if it’s just the Grandmaster…”

“That could be a problem.”    

“I’ll know in a little while, I can feel a little bit-” The door in front of Valkyrie swings open.    

“Hullo, lovelies! Glad to see you’re up One-Four-Two.” Loki tenses.    

“What do you want from us?” She says.    

“What do I - Well, I want my planet back. I want my tower, my champion, my _ship_. I want revenge. But I’ll take whatever your foolish king, that seductive lord of thunder, will give me. Most of all, Scrapper,” The Grandmaster says with a dramatic sigh. “I want to know _why_. Why would you betray me like that? I thought we were friends! I thought you were _happy_. What happened, what did I do wrong?”    

“We _were_ friends,” She says carefully. “But I had…I wanted revenge too. Thor promised me revenge on Hela, who killed my sisters and my lover a long time ago. That’s why I left, and we disabled the mainframe only to help ourselves escape. I thought the other Scrappers, Topaz, your guards, they would all round up the other slav - _prisoners_ without much difficulty. I didn’t think they’d be so incompetent.”

The Grandmaster taps his chin with a long finger. “It was very, _very_ disappointing. I was angry with Topaz for a while, but she’s the only one who stuck by me in my time of need, so all is forgiven. That doesn’t explain your actions, dear Loki. I took you into my home, my parties, my suite in the arena, my bed, and you betrayed me.”    

“I was…I was blinded by sentiment, Grandmaster. I was intending on bringing my brother to you, but he foiled my plans and escaped. I would have stayed, to help you, but I was suddenly fearful he would be killed by our sister. I went to retrieve him, like you commanded-”    

“If you were planning on fulfilling your promise, why did you not return with him? Why have you spent a year traveling the galaxy in my spaceship? And besides, I thought you were adopted. I thought things were _complicated_.”    

“They are,” Loki chokes out. “I am, but, I said, I was blinded-”    

“Sentiment. Right. Nostalgia. I can feel that. See I’m nostalgic now, for what _we_ had.” The Grandmaster moves in front of Loki and the Valkyrie can’t see him anymore. “You really hurt me, Lo.”    

“I apologize-”   

“Don’t worry!” He says, suddenly bright. The Grandmaster’s mercurial moods were difficult to track at the best of times. Now they were even more dangerously unpredictable. “I’m sure you’ll make it up to me. But first! We have to set the scene a bit. And you’ll both be needing another dose, wouldn’t want you to get too feisty.”

“Grandmaster, that’s hardly necessary-” Loki is cut off with a soft cry.

The Valkyrie jerks at her bonds. “What are you doing to him?”    

“Relax, scrapper, it’s just a gag. Some rags, sorry if they don’t taste so good, Lo, they’re the best I had on hand. And a blindfold, kinky, right?” Valkyrie feels Loki begin to tremble. He’s breathing fast, too, pulling on the ropes tying them. She twists her hand in the rope, managing to brush the inside of his wrist with her index finger. She hopes it’s at least somewhat soothing. “And just a little prick, there. This will make you relax. You’ll feel much better once your medicine takes hold. I know you’ve never liked being blindfolded, Lo, but it just makes such a pretty picture. Your brother - adopted, whatever - will be so _moved_.” The Grandmaster comes back into the Valkyrie’s view, holding rags. “Now, open up, Scrapper.” She’s burning with rage, but complies. He gags and blindfolds her as well. “I’m setting up a hologram camera, so we can get a live feed when we meet the lord of thunder. But I might print a copy for him, just as a reminder. Wouldn’t that be nice? He’d like that, right? Get ready for the needle, Scrapper.” She jerks as the cold metal needle pricks her skin just above her collarbone. “Night, night! I’ll be back as soon as I can.”    

Loki’s breath is already slowing, as he slides towards unconsciousness. His head tips back onto the Valkyrie’s shoulder. She feels the drug in her blood, even stronger this time. She doesn’t pass out, but floats, uncaring and insensible. She doesn’t know how long they’re like that.    

Hours must pass. As some point, Loki moans, head tossing, and Valkyrie nearly remembers where she is. But the drugs are too strong and lucidity is fleeting.    

The drugs are just starting to leave their systems when the Grandmaster returns.    

“Well, that went less than ideal. I swear, Lo, your brother is just…is just the worst. He doesn’t get what I’m about at all. But he liked seeing you.” Loki makes a strangled, small sound. “Hostage negotiations just get me so worked up.” The Valkyrie is slowly getting more conscious. There’s the sound of fabric rustling and then Loki is speaking.    

“I apologize, Thor’s always been…direct. He’s not very good at negotiations.” Loki’s words slur. “Grandmaster, the blindfold-”   

“Ah ah ah, patience. I don’t know how you put up with him for all these years. He’s so…so _blah_. Angry. That lightning is pretty though.”    

“You didn’t…” Loki’s next inhale is unsteady. “He was not-”    

“Aww, so cute, no, I didn’t hurt him. I just let him know what was at stake here, and we had a little chat. And he got so angry. Not like you, you were always so…accommodating.” There’s something in the Grandmaster’s voice that the Valkyrie doesn’t like the feel of. Loki shudders. “You were always so good to me.” The Valkyrie’s heart starts to race.    

“I could be good to you again, make you forget about my brother’s rudeness…perhaps if you remove these bonds…”    

“Oh, no, Loki, I have you right where I want you.” There’s movement and the Valkyrie’s bumped by something - the Grandmaster’s kneels, on either side of them. She can picture it, the Grandmaster straddling Loki’s lap. Loki’s next inhale is a gasp.    

“Grandmaster, if we go somewhere more private…”    

“What? Shy all of a sudden? Don’t you want the Valkyrie to see how good we were together.”    

“I’m just not sure that-”   

“Ah ah ah, just relax, Loki, baby.”    

“Grand-” Loki’s cut off and the low, breathy sounds coming from behind her tells the Valkyrie that the Grandmaster has kissed him. It goes on for a while, as the Valkyrie grows more sober and her heart starts racing in her chest.    

This is _fucked up_ , she thinks to herself when the picture of what is about to happen really starts to form. She bites down on the gag and tries to drown out the sounds of the Grandmaster’s arousal, his moans and gasps. It’s harder to tune Loki’s tension out, given how closely she was bound to him. He’s as rigid as a board, barely breathing. When the Grandmaster breaks the kiss, he pants for air.    

“Grandmaster,” Loki tries his best to sound seductive. It’s not his best performance, the nerves too apparent in his voice. “I’m truly not in the best position, if you untie me, we can go somewhere more intimate. This blindfold-”    

“But you’re so _pretty_ like this, Lo,” The Grandmaster says. There’s a rustle of clothes. The Valkyrie’s heart pounds.    

She wonders vaguely if it is better or worse that this is happening here. That she had to listen to this here, or have Loki dragged off to an unknown fate. Either way, she _really_ doesn’t want to listen to this.    

“Besides, isn’t it fun to have one-four-two here? You don’t want her to miss out on the fun?” No escape then. Her presence is a turn on, it seems. She always knew that the Grandmaster was an exhibitionist, she just always thought her place on Sakaar, the power that came with her skill and position, protected her from participating. Guess that’s over.    

She can do nothing else but listen then, as the Grandmaster starts to kiss him again. Loki seems to surrender to it as well, going limp and letting the Grandmaster do whatever he wanted to him. An added downside to his pliable stance, it draws Valkyrie further into their embrace as he pushes back against her. The Grandmaster moans and she hears fabric rustling. 

“That’s it, Lo, oh, how I missed you,” He whispers in his ear. Her ear, since Loki’s head is knocking into hers. “Didn’t you miss me?” The Grandmaster keeps _talking_. She doesn’t know how his partners have withstood his incessant chattering all these years.    

His chattering. Moaning. The wet sounds of his lips, sucking on the skin of Loki’s neck. The Grandmaster’s arm threads around her chest as he presses closer.    

Loki gasps in her ear, shuddering. She twists her hand again, managing this time to wrap her fingers around his wrist.    

Valkyrie doesn’t know how long they stay like this. The Grandmaster’s movements are growing more and more unsteady, his sounds swelling in volume. Then the door creaks open.    

“Boss,” Topaz, annoyance plain in her deep voice. “We have a problem.”

The Grandmaster sighs heavily. “It cannot possibly wait?”    

“No.” There’s a pause, the Grandmaster hesitates.    

“Fine,” He says reluctantly. “I’ll be along in a moment. “I’m sorry, sweet-pea, we’ll just have to finish this up later.” The Grandmaster’s arm leaves the Valkyrie’s chest as he rises. Loki jerks suddenly against their bonds with a cry. “I’ll be back.” He crosses in front of the Valkyrie and yanks off the blindfold. His lips are red, cheeks pink from lust. “Since you’ve both been so good, I’ll take off the blindfolds and the gags. I’ll see you both so soon.” He leaves them in silence.    

“Loki-”    

“Don’t.” He’s breathing heavily, leaning forward. “Just…don’t.”    

“Sit back,” She says. “I can’t breathe.” He complies. But he shifts against her, writhing a little. Uncomfortable. “Loki, are you okay?” He huffs.    

“Fine,” He says, but his voice is tight.    

“It’s not your fault.”   

“Don’t pity me,” He says roughly. “It was a gamble and it didn’t pay off. I thought he might want to take me to bed, and there would be a chance to escape.” That’s not how it happened. He’s rewriting it. She feels a flash of anger.    

“That’s not-”    

“It could still work, maybe when he comes back I can convince him-”    

“Loki, Gast is in control here, he will always be in control. There is no way for you to manipulate him. _He is in control._ ” Loki shudders. “But if you pretend, you can tell yourself that _you_ were in control. Is that what you’re doing?”   

“Stop. It could have been worse.”

Anger explodes in her. “How, how could this possibly be worse?”    

“He just…it could have been worse.”    

“Was it worse? A year ago, on Sakaar? _Shit_.”    

“It was an extremely effective way to gain power on that forsaken planet.”    

“I never _fucked_ the boss and I was in a much better position than you were.”    

“Why are you _yelling_ at me?” Loki shouts. “I tried, okay, I’ll try again.”   

“Like _hell_ you will!”    

“I’m sorry that you were dragged into this, but if we want to escape I will have to try again and yes, it will be risking you being an unwilling voyeur-”    

“Loki, no plan involving you being raped is going to fly.” A beat of silence.    

“What are our other options? Wait for Thor to give him what he wants? Whatever he asked for was likely so exorbitant that we’ll never be able to afford it. He cannot jeopardize our people. We can fight back against him, and be killed instantly. Or I can use what he wants from me to negotiate a more stable position for us and when we have an opportunity, we can escape.”    

“You are an idiot. A complete, _fucking_ idiot.” They fall into silence for a long while, the Valkyrie fuming. Over time, her anger dissipates. She’s still absolutely furious at the Grandmaster, at their situation, but she does start to feel something like sympathy for Loki. It’s not his fault they were in this mess, nor was it his fault he had such a fucked up opinion of himself that he thought this was a good plan. She wondered if that was something Thanos did to him, or if it was Odin and his shitty parenting.    

She feels like blaming Odin. Blaming Odin always feels good.    

“I’m sorry I shouted,” She says. “It’s not your fault.”    

“Thank you,” Loki responds.    

“You _are_ an idiot, though.”    

“How do you figure?”    

“If you think that your body is a worthy sacrifice on an altar for our survival-”    

“What choice do we have? Death? I’d rather not, it wasn’t pleasant the first two times I tried it.”

“We’ll _think_ of something. Or Thor will.”    

“Thor will keep far away from this, if he knows what’s good for him. And Asgard.” Loki pauses. “Don’t tell him. About this. Please.”    

Well, at least he was aware enough of how fucked up this was to know to keep it a secret from Thor.  
   

The day passes in a haze of pure boredom. The Grandmaster doesn’t return for a long time, and then it’s only to force feed them some truly awful tasting protein bars and water, and inject them with another dose of drugs. This one is much, much more fun than the sedative.    

“Do you think he ran out of the other one or if he’s trying to reward us?” The Valkyrie asks as she swims in a golden haze. She feels so good, every cell in her body singing with a relaxed pleasure.    

“What would he be rewarding us for?” Loki’s head is laid back on her shoulder, feeling heavy and warm.    

“I mean, you did make him feel real nice earlier.”

Loki’s laugh verges on hysterics. “He made himself feel nice, I just…helped. Was there. I don’t know.”    

“See, now you’re getting somewhere.”    

“What? Getting where?”    

“Never mind.” The drug made Loki extremely unfocused and forgetful. She would answer his question only to find he had forgotten having spoken at all. She found it hilarious, and a little cute.    

The drug starts to wear off after a while. Valkyrie finds herself getting a bit drowsy, but jerks herself awake. Loki’s dozing, head falling forward onto his chest. He snores softly. That’s cute too. But then she hears a sound, a loud crashing boom. She tilts her head at the door, but nothing happens.   

Fifteen minutes later, there’s another crash, off in the distance. It sounds louder now, closer.   

“Loki…Loki!” Valkyrie jerks against the ropes. “Get up, something’s going on.” He wakes, a little sluggishly.    

“It’s just the sounds from the station,” He says, sounding grumpy. He’s coming off the high too. “I’m going back to sleep.” The Valkyrie won’t sleep. She knows, something is happening. Five minutes later the door slides open. Thor slips inside on quiet feet. She grins.    

“Your majesty,” She says with an incline of her head.

Loki sits bolt upright, trying to twist around. “What?”    

“Are you two alright?” Thor says in a low voice, cautiously approaching them.   

“Thor, _what are you doing?_ ” Loki cries.    

“Hush, brother. I’m here to rescue you, of course.”    

“You can’t…you can’t just-”    

“To answer your previous question, majesty, we’re fine, but the Grandmaster has been keeping us under some pretty heavy sedation, to explain his highness’s sudden tongue-tied…ness.”

Thor goes to Loki first. The Valkyrie feels Loki shift as Thor no doubt puts his hand on his neck, as he is wont to do. “Hm. Very heavy sedation, indeed.”    

“Thor, what are you-”    

“I’ve already said, I’m here to rescue you,” Thor says brightly. He takes out a knife and crouches next to them, working steadily at their bonds.    

“These ropes must be reinforced, I haven’t been able to budge them.”    

“Don’t worry, I brought one of Loki’s knives.”    

“Well, don’t break it,” Loki says absently.   

“I won’t, dear brother, I’ll be careful.” Loki shifts. “Stay still.”    

“Thor, you can’t be here.” He sounds a little more coherent.    

“And why not?” Thor asks as he works at the ropes.    

“Because you’re the _king_. You cannot risk yourself in these foolish, reckless-”    

“You think this is a foolish task? The Grandmaster was going to kill you both, I wasn’t about to let that happen.”    

“I had a plan,” Loki says indignantly.    

“Yeah, your plan just involved you being raped, _before_ he killed us. Oops.” The words spilled out of her mouth before she realized. Thor tenses, but goes back to hacking at the ropes. “Wasn’t supposed to tell you that.” The sounds are back, crashes and metal groaning, growing closer. “We should probably-”    

“Clearly, you did not have a good plan. And needed rescue.”   

“But you are the _king_ , Thor, _Asgard_ needs you-”    

“And I need my heir, don’t I?” There’s a ringing silence.    

“Heir.” Loki sounds stunned. The bonds on their wrists break and Thor gets to work on the next rope.    

“I know we haven’t really discussed it,” Thor says. “And this is probably not the time…”   

“It is definitely not the time,” Valkyrie says. She is ignored.    

“Look, Loki, it’s been a year since Ragnarök,” The rope around their arms breaks and Thor moves to the other side to get their left wrists. “And you’re still here. You’ve worked just as hard as the rest of us to make this work. I trust you. The people love you. And if something happens to me, I want you on the throne.”    

“Thor, I…I don’t know what to say.”    

“Not that this isn’t very touching,” The Valkyrie says. “But Thor if you could just focus a bit and get us out of here, because the Grandmaster slaughtering us all would put a little bit of a damper on this conversation. We can talk about the line of succession later.” Stupid royals, _stupid_ monarchy. Everything was just so damn _dramatic_ with them. “I swear, if I die here because another one of your family’s-”    

“We have time,” Thor says. “I arranged for several very compelling distractions to give us time to escape.” Loki’s still not focusing, at all.    

“I never wanted the throne,” He whispers.    

“Why did you steal it from father, then?”    

“He deserved it,” Loki says plainly.

The Valkyrie snorts. “He _definitely_ did.”    

“But, no, Thor, that’s what I said on the bridge that day.” He grabs Thor’s arm with his free hand. “I never wanted the throne. I wanted to be your equal.”    

“You remember that now?”    

“Yes.”    

“He’s not going to remember any of this conversation tomorrow.”    

“Look, it probably won’t happen,” He snaps through the last threads binding their wrists together and kneels at Loki’s feet to start cutting through the rope around his ankles. “Because hopefully I’ll die a very, very old man with a dozen children and one of them will want it. But you’re all I’ve got. You’d be a fine king, maybe not a _great_ one, but I’m happy to call you my heir.”    

“You realize that makes this all much worse, right? Because not only is the king on a suicide mission, but the _entire line of succession_ is as well? Right?” They keep ignoring her.    

“I think there are supposed to be ceremonies for this sort of thing. But you’re the crown prince now, Loki.” He breaks the final bond and Loki is free. Thor kisses him gently on the forehead, then kneels by the Valkyrie.    

“You’re lucky I like you two.”

Thor smiles. “You love us.”    

“I hate you, but yes, okay, maybe there’s a little bit of…bit of love there...too.”    

“Just a bit? Really? A bit?”   

“Yes,” She growls.    

“Now who’s holding us up?” Loki says.    

“I’m not the one having a heart to heart over inheritance when the Grandmaster could come back at any time to melt us.” Thor cuts the final rope and she’s free as well. She surges to her feet-   

And promptly her knees buckle. Thor catches her.    

“I’ve just been sitting for so long.”   

“Plus, you two are also definitely still high.”    

“Joy,” Loki says absently.    

“Come on, let’s get out of here.” Thor pushes and pulls them into the corridor, keeping them in front of him. “Left here.” The hall opens up, turning into an iron mesh bridge, dangling over open space. It connects the main part of the station with this offshoot that the Grandmaster had squirreled them away in. To their right, a fire burns. Ships surround a part of the station, firing.    

“Norns, Thor, what did you do?”    

“I’ll explain later,” He says. Loki has gone very white and sways. “We have to cross the bridge. Heimdall’s waiting with one of the escape shuttles, we got the Ark away as soon as we realized you were gone.”    

“Thor, I-”    

“Keep your eyes on Valkyrie. I’ll be right behind you.” He keeps a hand on Loki’s lower back as they cross the narrow bridge. They make it, though Loki still looks distinctly pale. The Valkyrie trips on the step going down, but Heimdall is there to catch her.    

“Come. We have to move quickly.” They get on the shuttle and Heimdall fires the engines, driving them rapidly away from the Grandmaster.    

When they’re in space and the danger has passed, Thor wraps them both in his arms. “I was so worried, when you did not return. And then the hologram-”    

“I nearly forgot he did that,” The Valkyrie says, muffled from being squished into Thor’s bicep.

Thor kisses the tops of their heads, burying his nose in Loki’s hair. “Don’t you two ever, _ever_ do that to me again.”  
       

Much later, they’re in their shared quarters, having slept most of the journey back to the Ark, and a few hours there as well. They wake for dinner and are persuaded to bathe off the grime of several days imprisonment. By the time Valkyrie’s done, she feels fully sober for the first time in a long time. Loki takes longer in the shower, understandably; he has to wash the Grandmaster off his soul as well.    

Thor leans back on his bed. “So. Did he…?”    

“Thor, Loki didn’t want me to tell you anything and for once, I’m actually going to respect his wishes. If he wants to talk about what happened, he’ll come to you.”

Thor nods. “If you swear, he was not…if he-”    

“He wasn’t hurt. I don’t think he’s in any danger.” They fall into quiet, the Valkyrie trying to ignore the pounding in her skull, until Loki bursts through the door, dressed in his nightclothes and dripping wet.    

“Did we have a conversation about _me being your heir_ while you were _rescuing us?_ ” He cries. He sounds wretchedly sober as well.    

“Oh, yes,” Thor says sheepishly. “I did say I knew it was the wrong time to bring it up. But it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The throne probably would have fallen to you anyways if something happened to me, being my brother and the last of us, but I think it’s time to make it official. Make sure everyone knows that you’re the crown prince.” Loki sits heavily on the bed.    

“The crown prince.” He looks at Thor like he’s grown an extra head.   

“Loki, this is practically just a formality…why are you so shocked?” Thor touches his shoulder.

“I didn’t think anyone even still saw me as a prince, after everything that happened, let alone the next in line for the throne.”    

“Well, what did you expect would happen if I died?”    

“I…don’t know. I guess I never thought about it as a possibility.”    

“I’m flattered? It’s unlikely, but it’s important, for the stability of the people, for them to know that there will be an easy transition.”

Loki’s eyes are rapidly filling. The Valkyrie smiles. He’ll cry at anything. Cute.    

“What will your Avenger friends say?”    

“They will respect my decision. Well, hopefully. But we still have at least a few months before we’ll have to worry about that. And you’ve been through a lot, we can talk more about this in the morning.” Loki acquiesces. They turn out the lights.    

The Valkyrie can hear them whispering to each other in the darkness as she falls asleep. She thinks back, to the old Asgard, to her vows to put her life on the line for the throne.    

After all these centuries, she can’t believe she’s finally actually willing to do so again, to protect these two idiot brothers who somehow wormed their little royal ways into her heart.    

She’s so fucked.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story started with the relatively silly idea to have Thor and Loki having a heartfelt conversation about the throne while the Valkyrie sat there like 'oh my god please stop you're going to get us killed' and things kind of...spiraled off from there. 
> 
> Loki is simultaneously really good at playing the long game and also really bad at it. Like he can lay plans and see them through to the end and is generally very clever, but when it comes to the big-big picture, and especially his relations to other people, he kind of...loses sight of things. Like he's too wrapped up in trying to feel like he has control to realize there's no way for him to out-manipulate the Grandmaster and so convinced that everyone has the worst possible view of him to believe that Asgard might actually want him as king if something happened to Thor. 
> 
> I had a hard time tagging this with warnings as well, because it's such a horrifying fine line that Loki's been walking with the Grandmaster. He is probably never going to admit that he didn't have full control over the situation, but everyone, especially Valkyrie, looking from the outside in is just like 'yikes.' I guess that's why 'dubiously consensual' exists as a concept in fandom, though I ended up putting both because Valkyrie is more explicit about what it is...yeah. 
> 
> I apologize for how late this is going up today! I would say it was because I had a wild night out but the reality is I went to dinner, ate an obscene amount of pasta, had a snowball fight outside the restaurant, one beer at a pub, and then went home and fell asleep at 9:30. Wild and crazy Friday. Yup. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	19. Exhaustion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Revengers. The Ark. Warnings: canonical eye injury. 
> 
> Team Revengers' first night aboard the Ark.

The first night aboard the ark they sleep in an exhausted pile in an empty room.  

They had spent the day rearranging furniture, rearranging supplies, counting survivors, healing wounds, and trying to put some kind of order in place. They don’t come close to finishing before fatigue starts to dog all of them.    

Bruce Banner is always wrecked when the Hulk recedes (and hungry, but it doesn’t seem right to ask for food when it’s looking like their ration situation isn’t going to stretch very far). And there’s still so much to do, so he ignores his exhaustion and helps.   

Thor’s eye starts aching ferociously, the pain starting to radiate over his skull and down his neck, and a sudden spell of dizziness strikes him when they’re bringing a load of blankets to the place they’ve set aside as an infirmary.      

“You should have taken care of that hours ago,” Loki scolds, grabbing his arm and practically dragging him to sit. “It’s infected, I’m sure. Let me-”   

“No Loki, save your magic for the others, I’m fine.”

Loki ignores him, brushing fingers sparking with green seidr over the wound. “I’ve already taken care of the others,” He says. There are deep shadows under his eyes and Thor doesn’t miss the way his hands shake.    

“Then save it for yourself.” Loki says nothing. Thor feels the tendrils of his magic threading deeper, tracking infection and burning it out. “How many other mages made the ship?”    

“None that we have found so far,” Loki says quietly.    

“So you have done all the healing yourself? Loki-”   

“I will manage.”    

“There will be other things we need, you should have saved your magic, not wasted it on my minor-”   

“Brother, will you just cease your self-sacrificing for one moment and let me take care of you!!” Loki shouts suddenly. He steadies himself with a deep breath. “Now you’ve made me lose concentration.”    

“Looks like someone’s getting cranky,” The Valkyrie appears in the doorway. “We’ve been working all fucking day, I think it’s time for the princelings to rest.”    

“Of course, my lady Valkyrie,” The old healer says. “Prince Loki, you’ve been indispensable today, but you must rest.”    

“See?” Thor says, with a triumphant smirk.    

“You too, majesty. Come on. Up.”    

“You’re right. We should convene, talk about resources,” Thor says. “Then we’ll rest, I promise.”    

“Your majesty, the prince’s magic was able to burn out the infection, but the wound-”    

“Thank you for your services, lady healer, please, let me know if you require anything else.” He grasps her hand and rises. She bows slightly, looking perturbed.    

“Don’t worry, I’ll drag him back here if he collapses.” The Valkyrie follows Thor out of the infirmary, and Loki follows after promising to return soon.    

They find Bruce, trying not to fall asleep in the wide room they’d set aside as a sort of base of operations.    

“Okay, we need to go over what supplies we’re missing, how many injured there are, what we can use for trade-”   

“Nope.”    

“I’m sorry?”   

“Don’t make me go get Heimdall.”    

“Get Heimdall…what?”   

“To force you to sleep, of course.”    

“You can’t just put us to bed like…like children!” Thor cries, indignant.

The Valkyrie puts her hands on her hips. “Can’t I?” Thor glances at the other two for support. Bruce has his head propped up on one arm and he keeps jerking himself back from the edge of sleep. Loki is leaning against the wall, head falling back. Their eyes lock and he tilts his head with a little shrug. No help. “Come on, majesty. Heimdall’s got the people’s immediate needs covered and all the other problems will still be there in the morning. Including, you know, actually setting this ship’s clocks so we know when it is morning.”    

“There isn’t anything to sleep on.”    

“Come on,” The Valkyrie gestures. “You too, highness.” Loki looks a little uncomfortable, skittish, being so close to Bruce, but he keeps Thor between the two of them and the exhaustion takes over. Bruce barely even notices. He passes out on his back, arm across his eyes as soon as they’re settling down. Loki takes a minute more, his long fingers wrapping loosely around Thor’s cape, spread out on the floor beneath them. He blinks, like he’s trying to avoid sleep, but slowly his eyes drift closed. His breath is harsh, and slows as the fatigue finally drags him under, but remains shallow.    

“You can worry in the morning, majesty,” The Valkyrie says. “They’ll be okay, just rest.” Thor’s eye throbs. She lays down across their legs, spread on her side, and falls asleep.    

It still takes Thor a little while, his mind whirling with the magnitude of the task ahead of him, the weight of mourning his whole world.    

Loki makes a quiet noise in his sleep and shifts a little closer, turning his face into the cape. Bruce starts snoring softly, his nose making a little whistle as the air moves in and out. Thor feels a sudden swell of love, then accompanying terror. He’s not sure he’ll be able to keep them safe.

But then Loki shifts again, head now pressed against Thor’s side. Bruce’s arm drops over Thor’s chest.    

He wraps an arm around his brother’s curved back, places his other on top of Bruce’s, and falls asleep like that.   

That’s how the newly crowned king of Asgard spends his first night as monarch. When Heimdall comes to check on them, he smiles and drapes the blankets he brought carefully across the slumbering pile.  
   

Loki stirs awake, pressed to Thor’s side, with his feet numb. He’s concerned for a moment, before glancing down and seeing the Valkyrie laying across their legs. With a jolt he realized Bruce Banner is not two feet away from him, lying flat on his back and snoring across the expanse of his brother’s chest. But he seems actually peaceful when he’s sleeping, and Loki judges the risk of the Hulk emerging to be low. He turns his attention to Thor.    

Thor feels too warm, but he can’t tell if that’s a fever or just being unused to sleeping next to him. The last time they had slept curled together like this, they were practically still children, and Loki hadn’t known about his origins. The knowledge of his different biology might be affecting the way he perceives his brother’s body temperature.    

He sneaks closer to Thor, raising his hand to hover over the cavity where his eye once was. He hadn’t managed to get all of the infection the night before, not with his seidr already so depleted and Thor distracting him with his foolish attempts at stoic self-sacrifice.    

The magic still feels stretched. He hasn’t had enough rest to regenerate it after spending it so recklessly the day before, first in the fight against Hela and then in the healing room on the ship. He had spent the entire time between the coronation and when the Valkyrie dragged them to bed at healing, reasoning it was better to heal now by magic and spare their meager medical supplies for further accidents or illnesses. Once everything calmed down, he would rest.    

But then there would be transfiguring the Grandmaster’s useless trinkets into things that could actually be used. There would be spells to speed the growth of the crops in the artificial greenhouse, and charms to hold the rickety ship together, and trade negotiations, which won’t take seidr but will still be exhausting.    

Loki is suddenly overwhelmed, his pulse racing. He has a momentary urge to flee, to take the Tesseract he stole from the vaults and run from the crushing task that would be ensuring his people’s survival, but it’s banished for the moment by the simple matter that he’s not sure he has anywhere else to go.    

 _Focus on the task,_ he thinks. _Forget the rest_. He draws on his magic, burning out the infection and the pain, sealing off open and throbbing blood vessels. The furrows in Thor’s forehead ease and his breath evens out. It takes more out of Loki than he had budgeted and he gasps, a wave of dizziness passing through him. His head stops spinning but he finds he can’t hold it up any longer. He drops it to Thor’s chest, breathing hard.    

“Lackey?” The Valkyrie whispers. “You okay?” He nods. Thor feels less warm. That’s good.    

The Valkyrie sits up, which is less good. Loki wants to sleep more. He doesn’t think he’s ready to face Asgard yet. The return of blood to his lower extremities burns, sending pins and needles through his feet and shins.    

He struggles to raise his head.    

“No,” She says. “Stay.”    

“I have to go back to the healers, there were a couple-”    

“Highness, you are not in any condition to heal, not until we get some food in you and maybe a couple more hours of sleep.”    

“Yes, mother,” Loki says sarcastically, without thinking. The grief squeezes his heart and he turns his face further into Thor’s chest to hide the pain on his face.    

“Did you heal Thor’s eye?” Loki nods. “Good. He would have been annoying and tried to work through it until he collapsed.” She sits up, popping her neck and shoulders. “Okay, task one today, finish figuring out quarters, because I can’t take another night on the floor.”

Bruce stirs on Thor’s other side. “Is there any food?” Is the first thing he says. The Valkyrie laughs.   

“Okay, new first task, breakfast. Plus, I want the story. What’s with you and the Big Guy?” She offers him her hand and pulls him up.    

“It’s kind of a long one.”    

“Well, we’re going to be on this ship for a long while. We have time. Everything will get done.” Her words ease some of the overwhelming feeling. She’s right. It will all get done in time. Loki can afford a few more hours of sleep. “We’ll bring something back for you, lackey.” He absently wonders how long it’s going to take to get her to stop calling him that.    

He nearly drifts off again until he realizes he’s still laying on Thor’s chest. He lingers for a moment, before rolling off to into a tight ball facing away from him. He might not be planning on running, but neither of them are ready to go back to the way things used to be. Maybe someday, but not yet. He supposes it’s enough, for now, that he’s here. He falls back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I *completely* forgot how fluffy this one was. Literally the plot is just 'Team Revengers take a nap' which they desperately need. Unfortunately it comes before all the other crap I've put them through, so they definitely need *another* nap. One of the things that really sucked me back into this fandom after Ragnarok came out was some early fanart of Team Revengers all sleeping in a pile. I saw that and was like 'mmmm yes what is this??' 
> 
> I snuck in more of my personal favorite Valkyrie tropes - namely that she and Heimdall are the only functioning adults in the Asgardian government. Like she's *barely* a functioning adult but she looks at the disaster princes and is like 'okay I guess I'm in charge of these idiots now.' 
> 
> So this was a nice fluff break. Tomorrow is also fairly fluffy, the next day is more purely whump, then we enter a streak of fairly long independent plot days (so self-contained days, though one is actually a two-parter in which I actually explore the emotional fallout what a shocker. Another upcoming day contains flagrant misuse of mythology. I'm super excited for that one.) 
> 
> Have a lovely Sunday! 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	20. Concussion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki & the Valkyrie. The Ark. No Additional Warnings. 
> 
> A foolish accident, a poorly placed fall, leads to a quiet conversation.

Her head has never hurt this badly. Ever.    

“This is some hangover,” She murmurs to herself.    

“Not a hangover,” A voice says. Loki. She blinks her eyes open and turns her head towards the sound of his voice. He’s blurry. She says as much. “You have a concussion.”    

“A concussion.”    

“Yes. You fell from the upper decks and hit your head on the railing. I’m not sure what you were doing, but they brought you here.”    

“And you’re left to look after me, master healer?”    

“They asked me to make sure you didn’t die in your sleep, yes.”    

“You know-” She’s not sure she knows what she was about to say. Whatever it was suddenly becomes far, far less important than vomiting into the basin set next to her. She moans and spits. “Damn.”    

“Yes.”    

“You’re an ass.”    

“I’ve never pretended to have good bedside manner, my lady Valkyrie.”    

“Are you…are you _reading?_ ” He’s come a bit better into focus, and there’s a book in his lap, place held loosely with a finger between the pages.

“It’s not like you’ve been very entertaining, unconscious as you were.”    

“Where’s Gudrun? She won’t at least be so-” The nausea rises again and she brings up yellow bile, back bowing with the force of the heaves. Loki gets up from his chair, setting his book on the seat. He takes a small cup and fills it with from a purple bottle.    

“Gudrun and her apprentice are attending a birth. She assured me you were not likely to die, so I became stuck watching over you. Here, this should help the nausea.” She winces at the bitter taste of the liquid.    

“No chance you can use your magic to get rid of this damned headache?”    

“I’m afraid messing about with your brain is far beyond my skill. Eir could maybe, _maybe_ have done it, but all the neurons, and the small veins in the brain are so sensitive that altering them with magic would be as likely to leave you a catatonic shell as cure the symptoms of your concussion. So, you’ll have to do this the old fashion way. Wait. And rest.”

The Valkyrie moans and covers her eyes with her arm. “I hate you.” She hears him moving about the makeshift infirmary, then he’s tapping at her arm. He replaces it with an icepack when she moves it. “Okay, I hate you a little less. So, how long was I out?”   

“Just an hour or so. Do you remember anything?”   

“I think…I was helping Korg with something? It’s still a bit…confusing.” They lapse into silence for a few minutes. “A stupid fall. I’m a damned Valkyrie, can you imagine if I had died in a foolish, accidental fall?”    

“It would not be a fitting end for your order.”   

“You’re right, I’m the last Valkyrie. Norns, imagine if I died in a _fall_. How fucking stupid.”    

“It would be stupid.” Loki returns to his chair, moving his book aside. “Thor would be devastated. You know, he used to want to be a-”    

“Yeah, he told me on Sakaar.”

Loki’s lip twitches. “Of course he did. Did he tell you about the capes? He made blue capes out of some old curtains and wore it around the palace for weeks even as Father kept insisting that he couldn’t be a Valkyrie because they were all women. That phase lasted a while, to my recollection.”    

“Capes? You said capes plural?”

Loki colors. “I was practically still a baby.”    

“That is adorable.”   

“No, no, don’t think we were-”    

“So cute.”    

“No, we’re-”    

“Adorable.”

Loki sighs. “I will leave you here to die.”    

“No you won’t,” The Valkyrie says brightly. “Like you said, Thor would be sad.”

Loki sighs again. “You’re right. I won’t. We have grown a bit used to having you around, I suppose.”    

“Wow, lackey, it almost sounded like you’d miss me, if I’d died. How long before I can have a drink?”

“I would. Miss you,” Loki says quietly, pointedly ignoring her question. “I don’t know, I know we fought at first, but you’re the only other one who ever…I don’t know, rolls their eyes at the formality of some of these planets, and puts us in our places when we’re acting too pretentious, and you’re not afraid to yell at us or criticize us, but I know you’ll protect us, not just because of oaths to the throne, but because you actually seem to care about us, even me for whatever reason, like the older sister we never-” He goes silent in a second, eyes widening. The only sound for second is her sharp intake of breath. “I’m sorry-”   

“It’s fine.”   

“I didn’t mean it like that.”   

“It’s _fine_.”    

“We didn’t even know about Hela until-”   

“Loki, it’s _fine_.”    

“I didn’t-”    

“Highness, really, stop. I know you didn’t mean it like that. Really.” It’s awkward for a minute. “Why do you care so much anyways? You’re the one who pried it from my head.” There’s still a certain note of bitterness in her voices. He winces.   

“That was different. I was trying to get you to _stop_ , and it was clear that I was hopelessly outmatched. I…utilized the skills within my disposal. Tricks.” There’s bitterness in his voice as well, perhaps a mirror of her own.    

“Some might say it was a dirty move,” She says. “But I’d say it was smart. You fight as dirty as me, I’ve always liked that about you.” She sits up with a wince, holding the icepack to her forehead with a hand. “Us cheats have to stick together.” He gives her a smile so small she knows it’s real. “To protect those pure, noble fools who won’t take the dishonest way. Right?” Loki nods. “Besides it’s not like there was any room for fair play on Sakaar.”   

“You should really lie back down, my lady,” He says. “It’ll be a few hours at least until you’re well enough to be moving around.”    

“Ah, but being in bed is so boring.” She lies down nonetheless, because being upright had indeed made her dizzy. “Highness?” Loki raises an eyebrow at her. “I just…you didn’t deserve Hela. You haven’t been perfect, but…you didn’t deserve to have her as a sister.”

Loki’s half smile is a little shaky. “Well, lucky for me, she’s not my sister.” He doesn’t quite sound like he believes it though. “You may have to say the same to Thor eventually, I think he might wish to hear it. And if you think _I_ didn’t deserve her as a sister…” He looks down at his hands. The Valkyrie thinks about how it must feel, to have everything you knew about your family torn asunder twice, and to be so uncertain of your own place in it. All the terrible things it turned out Hela had tried to do to them over the years.    

“Neither of you deserved her. Truly.” They are quiet for a little while. “Brunnhilde,” She says suddenly.    

“What?”   

“That’s my name.” He looks stunned. “Okay, calm down, it’s not that big of a deal.”    

“When you’re back in your right mind, you’re going to regret telling me this.”   

“Not if you don’t tell anyone.”    

“Brunnhilde,” He repeats. “It’s a nice name.”    

“Keep calling me Val for now.”    

“When have I once called you ‘Val,’ my lady?”    

“Okay, keep calling me ‘my lady,’ then.” She’s fading fast, the short conversation tiring her out.    

“You should sleep. You’ll feel better in a few hours.” He picks his book back up.    

“I swear, if you tell-”    

“Of course not, Brunnhilde.” There’s quiet for a minute or so, and the Valkyrie is almost back to sleep when he speaks again. “Did anyone ever call you Hilde?”   

“As soon as I can stand up without vomiting or falling on my face I am going to stab you in the-”   

“Violating your vows to protect the throne so soon?”   

“It won’t be fatal. You’ll have deserved it. Thor will pardon me.” She smiles crookedly. “I’m kidding. Not going to hurt you, highness.” A cool hand wraps around hers on the bed.    

“Go to sleep. You’ll regret all of this in the morning.”

She squeezes. “I won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read a snippet of an interview with Tessa Thompson once where she said something like the line between love/hate for Loki and the Valkyrie is really fine, because they're so similarly broken and hurting in a lot of ways. I think they tend to gravitate towards each other, hence the occasionally shenanigans like the one that got them kidnapped by the Grandmaster. 
> 
> This one was also fairly fluffy, I'm giving you a reprieve for a while. ;-) But don't worry: the 20s prompts were where all of my kind of weird ones ended up, so we've got a few rough days ahead. I just realized the one I'm schedule to post on (US) Thanksgiving is...let's just say I took a very literal interpretation of 'Self-Sacrifice'...
> 
> These are also getting more perilously interconnected. Clearly, some lines in this one re: Hela are revelations we haven't seen yet, so that's coming up. (I really need to finalize this timeline, it's currently just a mess of dotted lines in my notebook.) 
> 
> It's currently snowing and I'm resisting the urge to put on Christmas music. Clearly a wonderful day to grade papers and finish up the last three prompts I haven't finished yet!
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	21. Harsh Climate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki, Thor, & the Valkyrie. Sakaar / The Ark / Sanctuary. Warnings: implied sexual assault, psychological torture. 
> 
> Loki's not a fan of the heat. (In three parts.)

_Sakaar-_

 

Outside of the perfectly climate controlled tower, Sakaar was oppressively hot. And that was not just Loki’s opinion, though of course he felt it worse than others. Especially because he preferred to be wearing much more clothes than most of the Sakaaran residents.    

The Grandmaster insisted, in that way that told him this really wasn’t a suggestion, that they go have a picnic by the training grounds and watch the possible contenders practice.    

“You know how _excited_ the fights aways get me. It’s not quite the same, since they’re really not supposed to kill each other training, and that’s half the fun, but perhaps we can do something else exciting to make up for it.” He runs a hand down the center of Loki’s chest.    

“You know I am always up for suggestions.”    

The training fields are much worse than he imagined. The fighters kick up dust, and the air still reeks of rotting garbage. The sun is high overhead, the sweltering heat hangs over him like a wet blanket. Loki curses his love of black clothing.    

Especially since it makes him sick to look in the mirror as of late. The pale skin, the green and black fabric, the dark hair. He looks in a mirror and sees Hela’s face staring back, Hela’s face as she shatters Thor’s hammer and sends them careening from the bifrost, Thor to his-    

The Grandmaster claps enthusiastically as one of the fighters runs the other one through with his blade.    

“I do love accident deaths! What fun! Loki, why don’t you have a glass of wine, relax a little. You look a little…flushed.” He’s drenched in sweat and starting to feel woozy as the Grandmaster pushes a glass into his hand. The wine soothes his parched throat but only makes the dizziness worse. He’s too lightheaded to resist as the Grandmaster pushes him back down on the blanket.    

“Wait-” Loki slurs, dropping his head to the side.    

“Wait? For what, Lo?” He can’t remember what he was going to say. He’s just so hot, feeling like he’s burning up from the inside. “I think you just need to ah, lose a layer, hun…” His shirt is stripped off and he loses track of things as he melts into the ground.    

Later, when the Grandmaster’s done having his fun, Loki rushes, stumbling, back through the tower to his room. He barely makes it before heaving up everything he’d consumed in the last few days, until he’s just spasming, producing nothing but bile. He stopped sweating hours ago. He lists to the side when the heaves finally stop.

“Cold,” He says quietly to himself. “I need to be cold.” The tub. He manages to almost get to his feet, tripping over to the bathtub. “Please, _please_ be cold.” He turns the tap, nearly weeping as the water pours out ice cold. Shaking fingers undo the straps and buckles of his clothing. He strips naked and dives into the cold water.    

The relief is instantaneous. His sore, aching body sighs in gratitude. He could weep for how good it feels. He looks at his hand and thinks he might see blue. He slips his head under the water and stays there until his lungs burn.

 _The Ark_ -

 

He should have spoken up sooner, when he felt the first wave of dizziness. He didn’t though, thought they would just be a few more minutes waiting for this mechanic to produce the part they’d purchased. But a few minutes stretched into thirty, and then an hour, and the temperature keeps climbing in the steel warehouse.    

“I don’t know how they stand it,” Thor says, rubbing the back of his neck.    

“The inhabitants of this planet usually don’t work during the hottest part of the day. This guy is just being a dick to us for the fun of it.” The Valkyrie fans herself. He could have spoken up then, but still he said nothing, even as the room began to spin. It should only be a few more minutes, just a few more minutes. He sways, just trying to endure.   

“Loki, are you alright?” Says a voice from far away. Then nothing.    

“-Loki!” He blinks his eyes open.    

“How did I end up lying down?” A damp cloth settles on his forehead.    

“You fainted, brother.”    

“Oh. How embarrassing.” His feet are propped on a chair, hands resting on his stomach.    

“How are you feeling?” His stomach flips and his mouth fills with saliva. He really hopes he’s not about to throw up on his brother’s shoes.     

“Fine,” He manages.    

“Hm.” Thor rewets the cloth and drapes it on his forehead. He puts another on the back of his neck and Loki moans with how good it feels.    

“Brought the ice!” Right, the Valkyrie had been here too. A double humiliation. She pulls his hands to the sides and places bags of ice on the insides of his wrists. He realizes his leather over-shirt has been removed, leaving just the cloth under layer. “A lady down the street was very nice, at least nice once I showed her the sword. Here,” She passes a couple bags to Thor, who tucks one under the back of his neck and drapes two over the joins of his shoulders.    

He doesn’t want to admit how blissfully fantastic this feels.    

“We’re going to wait out the heat of the day here, just another hour or so. Then we’ll get you back to the ship and dump your ass in the freezer. Should have said something, lackey.”    

“I should have noticed. Should have remembered, about the heat.”   

“Stop blaming yourself for everything, Thor. She’s right, I should have said something.”    

They wait a little longer, until the sun isn’t quite so high and Loki’s temperature has dropped a bit more. They help him stand, steadying him as he sways. Thor loops his arm around his shoulders to keep him upright. “Are you alright?”   

“Still dizzy,” He says. “But fine.” They step out into the day, where a series of very convenient rainclouds are forming. “I don’t remember seeing rain in the forecast.” Thor just smiles at him. Thunder booms in the distance and the first cool drops of rain hit their faces.

 _Sanctuary_ -  
   

“We’ll be passing quite close to a sun,” Ebony Maw’s sickly sweet voice comes from the shadows outside their cell. “Can’t tell you which, of course. That’s classified. It’s going to get quite hot.”    

“Enough,” Thor growls. “If you are not here to torture us or provide any useful information be gone! Your words are poison.”    

“I’m just informing you of the movements of the ship. Being helpful. I’m letting you know that rations — in particular water — may become quite scarce in the next day or so.” Thor stands, going to the bars. He’s breathing heavily.    

“Thor!” Loki hisses. “Don’t.”    

“Is that what you’re trying to do?”    

“I seem to recall, Loki,” Ebony Maw says. “That you were not over-fond of heat the last time you were a guest aboard this ship.”

Thor turns an impressive shade of scarlet. “You-”    

“Careful, your majesty,” Maw says. “You want me to come back with water once we’re past the star, don’t you?” Thor slams his fist against the bars, but Maw is already gone. The metal rings in the silence of their cell.    

“How bad is this going to get?” He asks after a moment.    

“Bad. Though I suppose it depends on how long they decide to leave me here.” Loki’s voice is completely flat. “There was one time, the first time, I was left for three days. I don’t remember much from the third, but they dumped me in ice for a while once we were clear of the star. The only danger is if they have tired of their games and truly want to kill me, but I don’t think Maw would have come to taunt us if they’d tired of us.” He twists his fingers together.   

“Damn it. _Damn it._ ” Thor punches the bars again. “We have to get out of here.”

Loki sniffs. “How? And do what?”    

“I can’t keep watching this, brother.”

Loki rises, placing a hand on Thor’s back. “You have to.”

Thor turns and embraces him. “How much water do we have left?”    

“Not much. And it’s lukewarm.”    

“We’ll save it. Ration it.”    

“It won’t do any good.”

Thor touches the back of his head and takes a deep breath.    

The temperature starts to climb.    

In a matter of a few hours, their cell is oppressively hot, the humidity clinging to their skin and making the air heavy and nearly unbreathable. Thor is drenched in sweat; Loki is soaked in it. His hair sticks to his face and his breath comes harsh and panting.    

“I’m going to die,” He says. “This is it, I can’t take any more.”

It is Thor’s turn to be calm and reassuring. “You’re not going to die, not like this. Soon we’ll pass the star and they’ll come for you and there will be ice and water.”    

“It’s so hot,” He cries.    

“I know.” Thor longs to reach out a touch him, but doesn’t want to transfer any heat between them. His mouth is bone dry. He takes up the water jug and passes it to Loki. “Have a little water.”    

A few hours later, the hallucinations start and Thor has to put aside thoughts of heat transference to touch him, in order to keep him from hurting himself. He sits with Loki’s back against his chest, grasping his wrists to prevent him from clawing at his own skin.   

“…they’ll come for me, they’ll come for me, we have to destroy them-”   

“Shhhh,” Thor soothes him. “It’s alright.” The hallucinations get worse, horrible waking nightmares that has Loki fighting against him, screaming.    

He stops sweating.    

The hallucinations calm after awhile, but he is feverish and listless. He doesn’t seem to know that Thor is there, stays as limp as a doll as Thor lays him on his back, pillows his head in his lap. Loki moans, tossing his head. His lips crack and bleed.    

“This is the last of the water,” Thor says quietly. He helps Loki drink down the last few sips of their lukewarm water.    

He knows what comes next and something very childish inside him fears it. He can tell it’s coming when something about the cadence of Loki’s breath changes. His eyes go wide and in a moment every muscle in his body spasms, tightening painfully. Then the next second they’re limp. And spasming again. Thor loops his hands under Loki’s head, keeping it off the stone floor as he violently convulses. 

“It’s okay,” He whispers, though Loki is far beyond hearing him. “You’re going to be okay.” The seizure ends and Loki goes limp, breathing heavily. Thor rolls him onto his side and strokes his hair. Loki’s eyes blink open.    

“Thor?” He slurs. “Wha’ happened?”    

“You had a seizure. Because of the heat.”    

“Oh. Is there water?” Thor shakes his head. “Where are we?”

Thor twitches. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”    

“I remember…I…I…”   

“Shhh, it’s okay, you don’t have to talk.”    

“I…” The convulsions start again, the second seizure coming far to close on the heels of the first. He bites through his tongue this time and spits blood onto the stained floor of their cell.    

Thanos comes himself, two days after the temperature had started to rise. Thor is cradling Loki in his arms, rocking him through periodic seizures and fever dreams.    

“We are past the star.” Thanos booms. “Give me your brother and I will ensure he is cared for.” Thor holds Loki closer. Thanos sighs. “I will allow you to come, if that makes this any easier. Just give him to me.” Thor stands, just barely managing to keep Loki in his arms.    

He’s too exhausted and afraid that his brother might die from this to resist. He hands Loki over, shuddering at the sight of his brother’s limp body cradled in Thanos’s arms. He allows his hands to be bound with a long chain and tugged along by the chain. Thanos takes them to a brightly lit tiled room with a tub full of ice in the center. Thor has to blink tears out of his eyes at the sudden light after days in the dimness of their cell.    

Thanos dumps Loki in the ice and opens a tap to let water flow over him. One of his lieutenants chains Thor to a pipe in the corner and gives him a jug of ice cold water.

“Aren’t you going to say thank you?” Thanos says. “I’m saving your brother’s worthless life on your account, you know.” Thor shivers and says nothing. “I could just leave him to burn next time we pass too closely to-”    

“Thank you,” Thor says quickly. “For saving his life.” When Thanos is gone, he hangs his head in shame. Thanos would play these little games sometimes, forcing them to acknowledge his benevolence, his wisdom. This was the fastest Thor had ever given into it.    

He can easily see now how Loki had fallen so deeply for Thanos’s machinations, that first time. The alternating between pain and relief, the way he got into their heads, the constant droning on during their tortures of his ideologies and plans, spoken through the mouthpiece of his Children. Loki had already been so broken and vulnerable when his suicide attempt failed and he landed here.    

Thor should be stronger. He had had time to prepare himself for this.    

Loki stirs in the ice bath and Thor doesn’t know how much longer he can go on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first decided to do this, I saw this one and was like 'okay so obviously this is Loki getting heatstroke.' It took me a while to figure out what actually to do, and you see, I never really decided on one, so it's in three parts! I also spent way more time than I should have reading about heatstroke, trying to figure out how long someone would survive once they got to the point of having seizures, whether they would regain consciousness without being cooled down, etc, etc... (I decided to just go with it, they're Asgardians, rules don't apply.) 
> 
> Also, confession time re: tomorrow's post: This is the first time I've done this but...it's not finished. It's also currently 5k words. I think I should be able to finish it tonight but if I'm not happy with it I might give myself an extra day and swap it with '23. Self-Sacrifice'. I'd hate to do it because I was so committed at the beginning to posting these in order, but '22. Friendly Fire' was one of those ones that went in a weird direction and I ended up loving the concept and I don't want to mess it up. But, I'm going to put in a good 9-5 day doing my Actual Job, and then see if I can finish it this evening. If not, don't worry '23. Self-Sacrifice' is also weird and 4.8k words so either way tomorrow is long and weird! Yay! 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	22. Friendly Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Valkyrie-centric. The Ark. Warnings: death, slavery, human trafficking, forced prostitution, sexual assault, discussion of suicide, execution, (though there is no _real_ character death), dehumanizing language
> 
> An accident during a fight leaves the Valkyrie in a coma. While Thor, Bruce, and Loki try to wake her up, she has to face up to the blood on her hands.

“Majesty!” The Valkyrie rounds the corner. “We’ve got a big problem.” Thor drops the screen containing the records of the plant production in the greenhouses that he had been consulting and turns towards her. “They’ll be on us in five minutes,” She gasps. “Ravagers.” Thor cursed. For all the troubles they’ve met on their journey thus far, the one he had feared most had, until now, not yet befallen them. Ravagers, pirates, out to pilfer their meagre supplies. It appeared that they had finally caught up, smelled the desperation and poverty coming off the shattered Asgardians and sought to profit.    

“How many?”   

“Three ships, but one is the flagship,” She says as they move swiftly through the halls. “So. A lot.”    

“Have you summoned-”    

“Heimdall and Loki are waiting for us, Heimdall snagged a Sakaaran sword for you from the armory. Plus, we have the Sakaarans, and the half dozen Asgardians I’ve been training. Should be a piece of cake. And Bruce is waiting in the wings if we need him.”    

“Good. If we can take care of this ourselves, without the Hulk, that’s for the better.” When they arrive at the airlock, the only way onto the ship, the others are already gathered, including several, very nervous young Asgardians.    

“Calm down,” The Valkyrie says sharply. “We practiced for this.” She draws dragonfang.    

“Besides, it will just be a couple Ravagers,” Loki drawls, flipping one of his knives. “Barely a challenge at all.”   

“Should be fun,” Thor says, smiling.    

“The shields are up, your majesty.” Heimdall hands him the sword. “They’re firing but their guns are relatively weak. They appear to be a boarding party, as the Valkyrie predicted.”    

“We just need a show of strength,” She says. “Keep them in this corridor, prevent them from getting into the rest of the ship, until they decide we’re not worth the trouble.” She hits a button and the airlock chamber closes. “The rest will back off if they start hearing stories of lightning and magic.”

“And swords.” Thor smiles back at her.    

“So give it all we’ve got, that’s the plan then?” Korg asks, hefting his club over his shoulder.    

“And make it dramatic.” Loki keeps flipping his knives, grinning.    

“Sounds like it’ll be a party,” Korg says brightly. “Though don’t know about dramatics…” There’s a shuddering boom.    

“Get ready,” Valkyrie tells her young soldiers.    

The porthole is blasted open and the fight starts.    

They’re wildly outnumbered but they’re also Asgardians, four practiced and old Asgardian warriors backed up by the enthusiasm and fear of the youths and the hardened experience of Sakaaran former gladiators, facing dirty, starving, rough Ravagers. Their combined skill, brutality, and magic push the pirates away, not letting even one get past the airlock chamber. Lightning flashes throughout the corridor, illuminating them in eery blue glows.   

A stream of blood shoots over the floor as Loki wrenches his knife from a Ravager’s throat.    

“Watch it, lackey,” Valkyrie shouts, but she’s smiling. “You’re getting blood on my leathers.”   

“My lady, behind you!” The Valkyrie turns at the shout of one of her charges. There’s a Ravager bearing down on her, and she raises her sword to block his blow.    

The young soldier, too far away, picks up a weapon that one of the Ravagers dropped. Thor sees it all in slow motion. The Valkyrie takes a step back, just barely out of danger, as the young warrior raises the weapon.    

“No, wait!” Thor cries, but it is too late. The warrior fires, but his aim is off. He strikes the Valkyrie instead. She crumbles without a sound. Horror dawns on the young man’s face. The one he had been aimed at is taken down by Korg, smacked across the head with his massive club.   

Things happen fast then. Thor’s lightning strikes out, far more precise that the weapon’s aim, frying the Ravagers who close in on the vulnerable Valkyrie. Loki is there in a moment, dragging her out of the way, and out of sight.    

The fight ends not long after, the Ravagers pushed back by the force of the Asgardian rage. They prove they are not the easy marks the Ravagers thought they would be, and the pirates retreat. Thor instructs Heimdall and the warriors to deal with the bodies, and rushes from the hall.    

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” The young man who shot the Valkyrie cries. “ I didn’t mean-”   

“It was an accident,” Thor reassures him. “We’ll talk about this later.”   

He finds the Valkyrie, still limp, with both Bruce and Loki leaning over her. His heart sinks into his stomach.    

“No-” He gasps.    

“She lives,” Loki says quickly. “And does not seem to be physically injured. Though she will not wake.”   

“Her pulse seems normal,” Bruce says, fingers on her neck.    

“I don’t detect any abnormalities.” Loki places his hand on her forehead. “Nothing.”    

“But she won’t wake?”    

“No. We should get her to the infirmary. Damn, I’m glad I told you guys to buy a brain scan from that last hospital,” Bruce says as he takes her feet, Thor her head and shoulders. Loki hangs back.    

“Are you coming, brother?”   

“I’m going to retrieve the pistol. Perhaps it contains some clue.”    

The Valkyrie’s form feels very heavy, a dead weight on Thor’s shoulder.  
   

When the Valkyrie opens her eyes, she’s back on her ship. The _Warsong_. On Sakaar.   

“This isn’t right,” She says quietly to herself. But as soon as she says it, the reasoning behind the feeling dissipates like smoke. Why wouldn’t it be right? She’s been on Sakaar for decades, centuries by now. She shakes off the odd thought and takes up her bottle.    

She gets herself right to a good, manageable level of drunk and heads out through the trash piles towards downtown, to collect on a debt. The boss still owes her from the other week.    

But when she arrives at the tower, something’s _off_ again.    

Since when have the Grandmaster’s little companions looked so _grey_? The Valkyrie watches them as they pass. It’s not just their clothes, it’s their eyes, grey and tired and drained.    

“Gast must be some mood,” She says to herself. She arrives at his usual office, only to have Topaz tell her to go to the Grandmaster’s private suite overlooking the area. He doesn’t usually start the fights this early, but she shrugs and skips off without a second thought.    

“One-four-two, come in, come in!” The Grandmaster seems like his usual affable self. “Have a drink!”    

“Got anything stronger?” She asks when he hands her a glass of bright turquoise liquid.   

“Sorry, all I got.” The Valkyrie normally doesn’t pay much attention to the masses of sycophants and courtesans that mill about the Grandmaster, but this time they’re kind of hard to ignore, lurking just at the edges of her vision. She’s hyperaware of their presence, but can’t see any of their faces. It makes her feel unsettled again, like something is wrong with her place among them.   

“Starting the fights early, Gast?” She says to distract from it.   

“You know me, can’t ever wait for the fun to start! Now, what are you doing here? You only come to the fights when you want something from me,” He says with a coy smile.   

“You still owe me, from the other week.”    

“Right! Right!” He claps his hands. “Of course, Scrapper. Now, let’s see…which was it?” He takes up his drink and swirls it, tapping his chin pensively. “Was it the Kree you brought me? He was a fighter, lasted almost fifteen minutes against my champion before being crushed into dust. Or the girl who had already been bought and sold over and over on Knowhere before she fell here, and you brought her right to me. She lasted three months, before one of my guests got a little too jealous of her other ‘clients.’ Snapped her neck with one hand.”    

“Gast…?”    

“Or! Or! The one who broke his femur when he landed and you slapped an obedience disk on him anyways, and we ended up using him as chum during a melee. That was a bloody scene. Or that one with the heart condition, oh, maybe that one wasn’t your fault, you couldn’t have seen that coming…heart just _stopped_ right there, the second you zapped him with the disk. Gave him over to the scavengers for food. Did you know, his people believe that if the corpse is consumed by another living being, the ghost will spend the rest of eternity wandering around, _starving_ and never able to find rest or satisfaction. Isn’t that _interesting_.”   

“Gast what are you doing?”   

“There was that Xandarian that I took a special liking too. He lasted…well, he lasted a long time. You remember, don’t you? You saw him, towards the end. Saw how much his soul had been _torn_ and _violated_ , and you weren’t even surprised when he was found at the base of the tower two weeks later, all crumpled and mangled-”   

“Stop!” She’s rooted to the spot. All she wants to do is run, but she’s trapped there.    

“Or the mage, oh you know how I _love_ mages. She wasn’t happy about it, but I was peckish, wasn’t I? She just shrieked when she realized what I was planning to do to her magic, and then next time you saw her she was just a burnt out shell, kept around so I could feed off her power until she was drained. Or, the Vanir warrior. He almost recognized you, didn’t he? He could tell you were Asgardian, he was just on the edge of it, figuring out who you were. You thought about cutting his throat and getting it over with, watched his twitching body below  you on the ship, but then you decided you wanted the money more, money to buy more booze, to lose yourself, forget about the _grief_ and the _guilt_ , about the blood on your hands. You were drunk as a skunk when you watched him fall in the arena and felt _relief_.”    

“Why are you doing this? Gast, what are you-”   

“I’m just reminding you of who you really are. A murderer. Oath-breaker. Slaver. You can ignore the blood, wash it away, tell yourself you’ve changed, you’ve gone back to being a proper Valkyrie, serving the Asgardian throne, but in the end you’re nothing but a Scrapper.”    

“How did you…how _could_ you know that-”    

“You’ll break your oaths. You’ll leave them to die, leave the rest of your people to suffer, to go _extinct_ , and then you’ll find a new planet to drink yourself to death on.” She tries to take a step back, but then he grabs her wrist. “Relax, One-Four-Two. The fight’s about to start.” He drags her to the window and the projection of his face starts. “Good citizens of Sakaar! We bring you a, ah, very _special_ presentation tonight. We have…the King of Asgard himself!” The gates open and out walks Thor, looking just as he had during his original fight on Sakaar. “Now, a special twist this week, Sakaarans. The King will be up against my beloved champion…and whoever wins will be tortured to death live _tomorrow_ night! We’ll stack the stadium for this one, folks!”

“You…you can’t, that’s not…”   

“Fair? Who cares about fair on Sakaar? You certainly didn’t.” The Hulk roars. The Valkyrie has never been afraid of the Hulk before. She had a certain affinity for him. But now she knows fear of the Hulk. And knows that even if he wins, he’ll only die too, and Bruce Banner with him, while the Sakaaran crowds cheer for the spectacle. “While you watch the show, don’t you want to sample some of the goods? I’ve got a new favorite, he’ll probably burn out pretty quickly and I’ll have him publicly executed for being boring, but for now he’s still spry, and really down for anything because, like all the others, he knows that on Sakaar, there is no saying _no_.”    

“Gast-”    

“Here he is now!” He grabs the arm of a man dressed in a sheer yellow robe. The only splash of color among the gray courtesans. Loki. His face is pale but his lips are very red, and his eyes are very green as he looks at her with desperation. No, not desperation. _Disappointment_.    

“You won’t help us.” His voice sounds far away. “You’ll let us die here because you’re too bitter and cold and heartless to care. You’ll watch Thor died in the arena, and me slowly drained, worn down by rape and abuse, and all manner of other ugly things, drinks and drugs and people using my body until I jump again and this time I have a more permanent end.” He blinks slowly at her. “Even if you didn’t care for the throne, we were still _people_ , alive, breathing, _hurting_ people. But then again, you’ve never held anyone’s life in much regard, have you?” She manages to yank her arm out of the Grandmaster’s grip and stumbles back.    

The Grandmaster wraps his arms around Loki instead. His hands wander, slipping lower as he sucks on Loki’s neck. Loki’s eyes never leave hers as before her eyes his soul withers, the Grandmaster sucking out his life and his magic, his hands slipping beneath his robe.   

“The Queen of the Dead…” Loki’s voice whispers after her as she turns and runs.  
   

They lay her out, flat on her back, on one of the small cots in their infirmary. Thor hovers as Bruce uses their nearly new scanners to image the Valkyrie’s skull.    

“Nothing. Everything looks normal.” Bruce shakes his head at the image on the screen. “Weird. What kind of weapon would cause unconsciousness without leaving a mark? And why-”   

“I suspect it’s the kind of weapon that would be helpful if you wanted to capture someone alive, and undamaged.” Loki sets the odd pistol on the counter. “Though I was under the impression that Ravagers didn’t deal in slavery.”   

“Maybe for hostages?” Thor asks.

Loki shrugs. “Perhaps. I think it’s more likely they just grabbed whatever they had to hand. Some superstitious pirate probably thinks of it as his ‘lucky pistol.’ And there are always rogue Ravager factions, still flying the banners but rejecting the codes and banished from the community. Unclear.”

“I think we should wait a while,” Bruce says. “The brain scans don’t show any swelling or bleeding, I’ll keep checking those and her vitals. It’s possible she’ll just wake up in a few hours, especially if it was supposed to be used to capture slaves or hostages. Doesn’t seem like they’d want to kill their hostages, right?”   

“I agree,” Thor says. “We wait. Keep monitoring her, and hope she wakes on her own.”

They wait a full twelve hours. There is no change.  
   

She runs, and runs, and runs, and she doesn’t know _how_ but the scenery changes before her as she flees. She doesn’t stop, not even as the trash heaps of Sakaar turn into a desolate grey wasteland. She runs on a single path laid out in the midst of rocks and only stops when her legs give out. The Valkyrie falls to her knees.    

“Welcome,” A voice says from the shadows. “I’ve been waiting for you.” The Valkyrie staggers to her feet and keeps running. Out of the corner of her eye she sees a giantess, sitting by the side of the path, and she does not spare the woman a passing glance as she runs. “You’ll come back,” The giantess’s deep voice echoes behind her. “They always come back.”    

She runs until she smacks, headlong, into another body. The crash knocks her onto her back.   

“Brunnhilde!” The voice is sharp. Familiar.    

“Ortlinde?”

The last captain of her division, a severe woman who nonetheless cared fiercely about the Valkyries under her charge. She glares down at her. “Get to your feet, Brunnhilde, it is time. Face the Goddess of Death on your feet.” She holds her hand out and Brunnhilde takes it and allows herself to be pulled up. She is suddenly dressed not in her dark Sakaaran leathers, but her silver and blue armor, like all of her sisters. With them, she mounts her horse and as the wings beat at her legs, she remembers all that happened here. Hela. The black blades raining down on them. Hela’s magic, destroying them, tearing them apart.   

She doesn’t move.    

She is as frozen as she was while the Grandmaster listed the sampling of the souls she had sold on Sakaar, just watches from the back of her horse as her nightmares come to pass. When it is over, she dismounts and staggers forward.    

“What have I done?” She cries. “How could I leave? I should have died here, the Valkyries should have _died with me_ , what have I _done?_ ” She begins to weep, falling to her knees.    

“Coward,” A very, very familiar voice says. “Traitor. Oath-breaker.”    

“Sigrún…” Brunnhilde opens her eyes and Sigrún stands before her a corpse. There’s a gaping hole in her chest, and her armor is near black with blood. It’s streaked in her long blond hair as well, and dripping from her mouth.    

“You should have died here. You were a coward who fled, instead of facing death with your sisters. You ran instead and left Hela to slaughter us all. You betrayed the oaths you made a thousand years ago, turned your back on Asgard, traitor, _cheat_ , murderer-”   

“That’s alright, isn’t it?” A deep, feminine voice cuts through Sigrún’s. “After all, why be loyal to a throne that betrayed you?” Hela herself strides into view now, her black hair loose. “Odin sent you to die. Odin made your lover hate you for doing the sensible thing. It is the throne, not _you_ who is wrong. Poison.”    

“No, it was _you_ who ruined everything! You are the monster-”   

“I am only the monster Odin made me. Just like you.” Hela smiles at her, brushing Sigrún out of the way. She offers a hand to the Valkyrie, pulls her up as Ortlinde had. “Aren’t you the same? A weapon, a sword, an _executioner_. Just like me. Except…I have the good graces to do it _quick_. A swift beheading, a knife to the heart. You make them suffer before you finally fell them. Sell them, trap them, and then after months, years, when all that they have left to do is _beg_ for the end, that, that’s when you finally execute them.”    

“No, I don’t.”   

“You and I are the same, Valkyrie. And you will be the start of a new order. My order. And together we’ll _break_ the throne.”  
   

“I think we should maybe be concerned.”   

“Banner, I believe that’s an understatement.”    

“It doesn’t seem like she’s going to wake up on her own. There’s very little brain activity, but her pulse rate keeps racing. It’s enough that I think she might be dreaming, but without the corresponding brainwaves and eye movement…it’s not _possible_.”

Thor sighs. “What do you think we should do?”

Bruce shrugs. “I don’t know. Other than maybe make for the nearest port with a hospital equipped with something like a neurology unit? I’m out of ideas.”  

“I have an idea,” Loki says from his perch on the counter. He has been quiet so far during this status update.    

“You know how your ideas make me nervous, brother.”

Loki gives Thor a withering look. “It’s a possibility, I think there were even some on Midgard that were working on technology to do this.”    

“What what is ‘this’ exactly?” Bruce asks warily.    

“We _convince_ her to wake up.”  
   

The dead lay at her feet, all the Valkyrior, her sisters. She is the last Valkyrie again, no longer Brunnhilde. Just the Valkyrie, an anonymous symbol, soon to be even further stripped down to Hela’s Valkyrie, a Valkyrie for the dead-   

She blinks her eyes and instead of the dark plains of Helheim, she’s on Asgard. Standing just outside the throne room, by the looks of it.   

“Valkyrie. Brunnhilde.” She turns. Loki stands before her, looking whole and hale, and dressed in his usual black leathers. “We have to go. It’s time to wake up.”    

“Go where?” She asks. “I was bound to serve the throne. I’m meant to be here.”    

“Yes. Of course. And you’re doing a fine job. But it’s time to wake up.”    

“What are you talking about?”    

“Don’t listen to him.” Hela strides into the hall, her long cape dragging behind her. “The snake. Silvertongue, god of lies, prince of the Void.”

Loki has gone pale. He affects his best mockery of a smile. “Sister…”    

“Oh no, you will call me ‘your majesty.’ And you’ll kneel this time. I am the queen, after all.”

Loki rounds on the Valkyrie. “This isn’t real. It’s just your memories, and mine, twisted together. You’re asleep, you know this, you have to wake up-”    

“Silence, snake!” Hela waves her hand and Loki doubles over, clutching at his mouth with a soft cry. When he rights and his hands drop from his face, the Valkyrie sees his mouth has been stitched shut with thick black cord. Hela grabs the collar of his shirt, dragging him forward. “Well? Aren’t you coming? You are the chief of my guard after all.” The second Hela speaks the words, it becomes real and she _remembers_ it.    

“Of course.” She follows the siblings into the hall.    

It is strewn with blood and corpses, stripped of all its gold and finery. Hela’s reign, the Queen of the Dead. As the Valkyrie walks forward, her clothes turn black and shred. She becomes one of the dead guards, a distorted, profane Valkyrie.    

Hela drags her brother forward, towards the throne.    

“Can’t have another challenger. You’ll help me won’t you? Like you did with the other.” Loki’s eyes raise and he makes a choked, horrified noise through his sewn shut lips as he sees Thor’s corpse, hanged above the throne. Thor swings from a rope in the ceiling, arms and legs bound and neck at a twisted angle. Loki turns back to the Valkyrie, eyes pleading.    

“We’re two of a kind, aren’t we, Lady Valkyrie? Destroyers. Breakers of the throne.”

She hears another voice in her head, Loki’s. _Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP._    

Hela’s holding another rope in her hands, already tied into a noose. Loki’s hands snap to his sides, bound by magic. Hela hands the noose to the Valkyrie.    

“You’ve always hated the throne, haven’t you? Ever since that day, Odin sent off the Valkyries, intending for you all to die by my hand. He knew and he sent you off to be slaughtered. We can end this, end Odin’s whelps. Break the throne.” Loki is desperately shaking his head. The Valkyrie feels nothing.    

She slips the rope over his head as he shakes it back and forth, pleading with his eyes. She tightens the rope and steps back.    

“That’s it, dear, serve your queen. End the sons of Odin, once and for all.” Hela waves a hand and the rope snaps up, pulling Loki’s body roughly up to join his brother’s. Loki dances on the rope, body twitching and spasming as he chokes.    

The spasms slow, then stop. The body swings at the end of the noose.   

The Valkyrie blinks and nothing makes sense.  
   

“Do you really think this will work?” Bruce says from his position at the Valkyrie’s head.    

“Loki seemed to think it would.”    

“Loki says that about a lot of things.”

Thor turns to Heimdall, leaning against the wall. “What do you mean by that?”    

“Nothing against Loki, my king,” He says. “But the prince worries me sometimes. He has too much confidence in his own magic. He believes he is strong enough to bring her out of the coma, but it’s possible he could make it worse, or become trapped in it with her.” Thor touches Loki’s head. “I’m just providing the worst case scenario. And advising that you perhaps have a serious talk with your brother about his use of magic lately.”    

“Heimdall-” He doesn’t get to finish because at that moment Loki sits up with a ragged cry. He gasps for air, clutching at his throat. Thor holds him up with a steadying hand on his back. Loki is too out of breath to speak.    

Bruce reads the Valkyrie’s vitals, checks the scan, and shakes his head.    

“No change.”

Loki finally catches his breath and rests his head on a trembling hand. “It’s no use,” He gasps, voice rough. “She wouldn’t listen to me, didn’t believe me. I couldn’t get her out. I’m sorry, brother.”    

“It’s alright,” Thor says, rubbing his back. “We’ll think of something.”    

“There is something, your majesty,” Heimdall says. “What I came to tell you. There’s a captive.”   

“A captive?”   

“Yes. One of the Ravagers was merely knocked unconscious during the fight. We’ve bound him and locked him in…well we’ve locked him in a supply closest, lacking the usual dungeons. It’s possible he might have some information as to the nature of the weapon.”   

“He might not,” Loki croaks.   

“I agree with Heimdall,” Thor says. “It’s worth a try.”  
   

The corpses dangle above the throne, knocking together as the ropes creak. The Valkyrie cannot take her eyes off them.    

“Ah, that’s better,” Hela says, taking her place on Hliðskjálf. “Now I’m the only one. Just like you. Just the two of us, together for the rest of eternity.”   

“No,” The Valkyrie says quietly. “No, we are _nothing_ alike.”   

“Did you not just hang your prince? But don’t worry, it’s not like he was really a person, the animal my father decided to take in as a pet-”   

“No.”   

“Oh, Brunnhilde,” Hela says. “It doesn’t matter how much you protest, how much you want to believe you’re a pure and noble servant of the crown. You know, deep down, that it is true. You and I are exactly alike. I pass on my mantle to you, Queen of the-”   

“Stop it!”

Hela descends the throne. She grabs the Valkyrie’s arm but her grip is almost gentle, that of a lover. “Come.” She takes her underneath the palace, descending deep into Odin’s vaults. At the very bottom, there is a pyre.    

Sigrún already lies there, still and silent now.    

“Isn’t this what you always wanted?” Hela says. “That you had burned with her? We’ll all burn together. It will be beautiful.” Orange flame licks up the sides of Sigrún’s body, consuming it. Hela smiles sweetly as she pushes the Valkyrie onto the pyre.  
   

“Unless you’re advocating-”   

“I am _not advocating_.”    

“Okay, guys, you know it really freaks me out when you have weird half-conversations like this,” Bruce says. “What are you advocating? Or not advocating?”   

“Loki is implying that he believes we have no other means of procuring the answers from this Ravager captive is through means of torture but I am _not_ advocating for that course of action.”    

“Perhaps the threat of it will be enough to loosen his tongue,” Loki says. “We could promise to let him go, though it’s unclear how we would accomplish that given the rest of his fleet seems to have abandoned him here.” Loki runs long fingers through his hair.    

“Remember when Odin would just drag prisoners before him, didn’t even have to say anything before they spilled all their secrets, they were so intimidated by the throne.”   

“I dare say I remember that _quite_ clearly,” Loki says bitterly.

Thor doesn’t even process Loki’s words because as soon as his own are out of his mouth, an idea is forming. “But if we could _make_ Asgard return…”    

“I do believe Surtur was very thorough…”    

“No!” Thor says, grabbing his brother’s shoulders. “It doesn’t have to exist…it just has to _look_ like it exists.”    

“So _now_ you have time for my illusions?”   

“Yes,” He says plainly. “We could use them. Recreate the throne room as best we can, or at least the atmosphere of it. We’ll make ourselves look like gods again and he’ll cower before us, as thousands did before Odin.”

Loki looks thoughtful for a moment. “I can do that.”   

“I suppose it’s worth a shot,” Bruce says.”  
   

The Valkyrie falls now, back onto the flaming pyre and then _through_. Her back hits the dusty dirty of a gray world. Hot flame surrounds her and she slowly gets to her feet. The flames make a perfect circle around her, entrapping her in a ring of fire.   

“Welcome back, my lady,” That deep feminine voice says. “You were gone a long time. But then again, I suppose you weren’t.”    

“Who are you?” She roars, spinning until her eyes alight on the giantess, sitting at her own, far smaller fire, roasting something on a spit. “What do you want from me?”

“I want nothing from you. You are the one who has interrupted my peace on the road to Hel.”    

“The road to…” The Valkyrie shakes her head, clearing it. She feels more coherent than she has in a long time. She remembers most things, at least. The escape from Sakaar. Ragnarök. The Ark. “Hel. Am I dead?”   

“No. You are asleep. And you will sleep until they can wake you.”    

“They?”   

“The King of Asgard. The Prince. The Scientist. The Watcher.”    

“King…Thor…right. But so this…this is all just a dream?”   

“You are far too old, Valkyrie, to believe that dreams and the path to Hel are mutually exclusive. And you have committed far too many crimes to believe you would not end up here eventually. One way or the other.”

She closes her eyes. “No.”    

“What, my lady? You believed you would find your way to the Halls of Valhalla? You dared to hope, that you would see your sisters ride towards you on their winged horses, welcome you with open arms to the halls of feasting and laughter and contests? You thought you would drink yourself to death on that planet, with funds earned from selling innocents into slavery, into death, and you would go anywhere but here? You broke your oaths, Brunnhilde. You belong here.” The wind is cold on her face despite the flames licking at her.    

“It’s not fair, it’s not _fair_. What of _Odin’s_ oaths? I did nothing but remain loyal to the throne, remain loyal to Odin, and he just sent us all to our deaths, left me with _nothing!_ ” Her voice has climbed to a shriek. “My sisters dead, my lover, my hope, my purpose. I didn’t even have my name, that was stripped from me too. So I left and I fell to Sakaar like everything else _falls_ to Sakaar and I did what I had to do to survive. Would you have preferred I let myself be taken to the fighting pits, used my skills honed by my training as a Valkyrie to murder the other fighters, bathe in their blood, is that what you’d _prefer_ I’d done?”   

“You caused far more death, bringing the Elder his champions. Letting others, the weaker, fall to the scavengers to be fed upon. And further deaths of souls, the ones you sold to him for other purposes-”   

“It wasn’t my fault,” She says, hands gripping the side of her head. “It wasn’t my _fault_.”    

“It was. And then your king returned to you and you sold him to die in the arena. You knew what was happening to the prince and you ignored it, you would have watched them die without remorse.”

She lets out a sob. “Yes. Yes, I was going to watch them die. I didn’t care. But then…but then I couldn’t. I didn’t. That’s real, I remember that. I didn’t let them die, I didn’t let Gast or Hela kill them. Thor was crowned king and I have served him well.” The giantess is quiet for a long while. “Say something, you _bitch_ ,” The Valkyrie says roughly.    

“You will not want to hear what I have next to say.”    

“What? Will you pronounce your sentence, further insist that I am bound for Hel? Who are you? Why do you hold such power?”    

“I am not but a seer, little Valkyrie. I sit here, on my own, and sometimes I have people like you to talk to. I will not further insist that you will go to Hel upon your death, Valkyrie. I see many things and you may yet have the time for redemption, before the End.”    

“That sounds good then,” She says. “Why should I not want to hear it?”  

“I see many things. Many possible pathways that time can travel. There is one in which you will play a vital role to ensure Asgard’s future. You will be queen.”

She laughs. “What? Me and Thor? But-”   

“No. You will not marry Thor.” Her heart sinks. That means…   

“Okay. Loki then…” They were both broken in the same places, after all. Shattered puzzle pieces that might fight back together. And if Loki was king that would mean…that would mean Thor would be dead, so they would truly be alone together in the universe. No home, no family, but they’d at least make a matching pair.    

“No. Not Loki.”

She takes a ragged breath. “What? They…they…how?”    

“I cannot tell you for certain. They will meet much peril before the end.”    

“You said…you said I would have time for redemption. Could I have time to save them?”    

“No. You will be the queen and they will be…away. You will be the new Queen of the Dead. You will be without.” The Valkyrie reeled back, stopped by the flames. Hela’s twisted, smiling, evil face smiling at her, holding Gungnir, appearing as a reflection.

“What did you just say?”    

“The Queen of the Dead. The Valkyrie Queen of the Dead.”

Her eyes are brimming with tears. “How much more can I expect to lose?”    

“Much.”    

“Damn you. Damn you, damn you, _damn you!_ ” She shrieks. “No, no, I won’t do this again. I won’t.”    

“You must. For Asgard. If you ever want to see your sisters, your lovers, your friends, your family, in the halls of Valhalla, you must be prepared to give everything away for the good of Asgard. Once more.” She drops to her knees.    

“It’s not fair. It’s not _fair_.” She screams, and the howl of grief torn from her throat lasts for a long time.  
   

The three of them, dressed in their finest, arrange themselves in the hall.    

“Are you ready?” Thor looks up at Loki on his left side. He nods.    

“Stay still for a moment, this will be easier.” Loki closes his eyes and the green light washes over them. It smooths out the weariness and strain, lengthens their capes and conjures embroidery and ornamentation to their tunics. Heimdall still has the bifrost sword, and he keeps it drawn, the massive blade resting on the floor before him. The hall itself transforms, looking golden and shining and impossibly large for the comparatively small space. It creates a feeling of being in a massive palace, like you could step off and be outside in Asgard, though it is impossible. They’re still floating on through space. It’s a eerie feeling. Loki conjures an approximate facsimile of Gungnir in Thor’s hand.    

“Nice touch, brother.”    

“I try.”    

“Well,” Bruce says, sounding a bit faint. He stands off to the side. “If this is what Asgard used to look like-”   

“Please, it’s barely a tenth of the opulence of what Asgard was.”    

“Well,” Bruce says again.

Thor bangs the staff and it even makes a sound as it impacts the floor. “Brother, your illusions are _uncanny_.”    

“Thank you,” He says, sounding indifferent but out of the corner of his eye, Thor can see the corner of his lip twitch in pleasure.    

“Bring in the Ravager.”    

Two of the young soldiers, including the one who had shot the Valkyrie, who seemed to be making up for his error by being particularly brutal to their captive, drag the captured Ravager before their throne. The pirate is forced to his knees, glancing up at them with wide eyes.    

“Well if we knew things were this fancy aboard this ol’ thing, we’d’ve come for you sooner,” The Ravager says. “Then again, ya did kill all my friends.”   

“And we will kill you,” Thor says, leveling him with a stern look. “Unless you can tell us what we need to know.”    

“I won’t say anything about my crew!” He gasps furiously.    

“Like we care about your crew,” Loki drawls. “You’ve seen but a fraction of our power, you believe we cannot deal with even a full Ravager crew.” The captive swallows.    

“We want to know about the weapon you brought with you,” Thor says.   

“We brought a lot of weapons, not that they did any good against bleeding magic-”    

“This one,” Heimdall says and gestures at Bruce.    

“Oh, right.” He brings forward the pistol and shows it to the captive. Thor sees the Ravager’s eyes grow minutely wider at the sight of it.    

“We want to know how it works,” Loki says. “And how to reverse its effects. And before you decide to answer…” Loki removes his hand from the back of Thor’s chair and holds it in a circle with his other. Between his hands forms a glass orb. The colors in it shift from black to grey to violet. It drops into one hand and he holds it out. “There are some that call me the god of lies. My magic, projected into this crystal, will be able to tell when you are lying. A lie, and you live out the rest of your days on this ship. They will be few.”    

“Now,” Thor says. “What do you know of this weapon?”    

“Nothing-” Loki’s ball goes entirely black.    

“A lie. Shall we make this a practice run? The next words out of your mouth will be the real game.”   

“Alright! I don’t know _exactly_ how it works, but the guy who used it was particularly fond. He bragged about it enough, ‘least. It turns the mind against itself. Affects every species differently. He liked to turn it on people and see what it would do.”

Loki’s crystal turns purple. “A truth.”   

“Our friend sleeps, and will not be woken,” Heimdall says.    

“Oh, that’s boring. He’d be real disappointed at that. Is she at least having nightmares? He always hated that one, cuz they just lay there ’til they starved to death, lest he woke ‘em.”    

“And he could wake them?” Thor asks, too eager.    

“Sure, ‘specially if they just slept. Used a machine, but I swear, I don’t know what it did. He said…he said it was part of them and you just had to interrupt-”   

“An organic molecule,” Bruce mutters. “But if I reverse the…yes!” He takes off down the hall, the others all blinking in surprise after him.

Thor shifts on the throne. “Apparently, you’ve been a great help. Asgard is in your service. We’ll leave you at the next port, what you do from there is none of our concern. Provided, of course, that we are able to wake our friend.”    

“You should,” Loki says, vanishing the crystal. Thor wonders if the thing really existed or was just another one of his brother’s uncanny illusions. “Tell your friends about us. Tell them what fate awaits them, should they dare accost Asgard, even now.”

The Ravager grins. “Now, I don’t know if you’ll be wanting me to do that, highness,” He says. “See, I’ve heard a bit of a rumor floating ‘round. A bounty. For a dark haired sorcerer, ‘bout fittin’ your description. And the one offerin’ isn’t one to cross.” Thor feels a flash of anger. Loki has gone very still and very pale at his side.   

“Take the prisoner away!” Heimdall booms. The young soldiers drag the Ravager back. “He was bluffing.”    

“Perhaps,” Loki says simply, stepping off the raised platform. Once they are alone he lets the illusion drop, and the Ark is transformed back to its simple metal interior. “We should go check on Bruce.” He walks away without another word on the matter.  
   

When the Valkyrie runs out of breath for the scream, she opens her eyes.    

The giantess is gone. The ring of fire sputters and dies. Instead, she is surrounded by corpses. _Hundreds_ of corpses. Corpses of the Valkyrie. Corpses of fighters and whores from Sakaar.    

Some of the rotting bodies are wearing clothes of the most modern Asgardian styles. Her blood runs cold as the implication dawns on her.   

A raven perches on the closest, picking flesh off the torn and bloody torso. It lets out a sharp caw, then hops over to her.    

“Not ready,” It says. Her heart feels like it is beating very fast, though if she is dead, why does it beat at all? “Not here.”    

“What are you talking about?” She holds up an arm and the raven flaps it’s wings, landing on her forearm.    

“Not here. Not ready. Queen of the Dead.”    

“I am _not_ the-”

The raven screeches. “Will be.” It shivers, shaking out its filthy feathers. “Brynhild, Dead Queen.”    

“Stop!” She shakes her arm violently and the bird, shrieking in offense, flies off to a dead tree. It perches there, on the thin and dried branch, and turns its back to her.    

“It was not the creature’s fault.” The Valkyrie spins around, seeking the source of the voice. “It merely said what it knows.” Behind her, among the bodies, stands Queen Frigga, as the Valkyrie had last seen her on the day she finally fled Asgard. “Or thinks it knows.”   

“This is impossible. Now I know it’s just a hallucination,” She says. “It’s been a thousand years. And you would never…you would never be in Hel, of all places.”    

“You’re right. I’m sure you’ve heard the tale of my death from my sons, you’ll know I died well, and in battle at that. So I am, indeed, feasting in Valhalla.”  

“Then how are you here? You have not denied being a hallucination.”    

“Nor have I confirmed it. But I will tell you: I am a hallucination. And I am not.”

The Valkyrie laughs grimly. “I… _hate_ witches, your majesty. Is it an oath you swear when you receive your powers of foresight? To only speak in riddles and in circles? Would it kill you to speak plainly for once? Ah, well, I guess you’re already dead.” Frigga walks up to her, and the Valkyrie holds her ground. “Are you here to confirm it all as prophecy?”    

“There are many paths the future might tread. Yours - and my sons’ - is particularly obscured from me. The giantess spoke what she believes is the truth. As did the raven. I will not tell you it is a lie, nor will I tell you it is all truth. The future is never set in stone. There is one thing that is true: you _could_ be all that they say.”

The Valkyrie laughs again and this time it is more like a sob. “The Valkyrie Queen of the Dead.”

Frigga says nothing, just holds out her arm for the raven, which takes its place, chirping as she strokes its feathers. “Perhaps it is not so bad as you believe,” She says. “One more thing, lady.” She looks the Valkyrie straight in the eyes. Her eyes are so, so blue. She smiles. “It’s time for you to wake up now.” She drives the heel of her hand into her forehead, just like Loki had when he pried the vision of the last battle with Hela out of her head. She falls backward-  
 

-and then she’s sitting bolt upright, gasping for air.    

“Whoa, whoa. We got you,” Bruce’s voice, Bruce’s hands steadying her.    

“What the fuck?” She croaks, taking in the too bright lights of the ship’s infirmary. “What the _fuck!_ ”

Thor is before her, his eyes as horrifyingly blue as his mother’s. “You’re awake now, this is real. You’ve been unconscious almost a full day,” Thor says very carefully. “You were hit by one of the Ravager’s weapons, but Bruce managed to figure out how to reverse the affects. You might still feel a bit off for a while, so take it easy.”    

“Do you remember anything?” Loki asks from behind her. She has to crane her neck to see him, leaning on the counter.    

“I don’t…” She swallows. “I remember nothing.” He looks at her for a long moment, then nods.  
   

She entirely ignores both Bruce and Thor’s fussing, and drags herself out of bed. She commandeers several bottles from the ship’s bar and sits in front of the wide window on space and looks out at the stars.    

 _The Queen of the Dead_ … She can’t get the words to stop echoing in her head, so she drinks and drinks, until the stars blur before her.   

“They’ll be annoyed if they worked so hard to wake you, only to have you fall back into a coma of your own making.” Loki sits beside her.    

“You think I don’t know my own limits?”   

“No, I think you know your limits. I also think that you’re lying about remembering what happened.” She turns to look at him and for a moment sees black thread, thick corded rope around his neck. Then it’s gone and she turns back to her bottle and the stars. “God of lies, right? I used that one on the captive earlier, to get him to tell us how to release you from sleep. I can’t really tell when someone’s lying or not, not with any certainty. I am semi-decent at reading people. And the expression on your face every time you look at me is particularly telling.”   

“So that one _was_ you? With Hela, on Asgard? Not a dream or a vision or a hallucination, that was you trying to wake me up?”   

“Clearly it didn’t work,” He says with a little half smile. “Look. You don’t have to talk about it. But if you want to…”    

“Unlikely.”  

“Fair.” He moves to rise and she jerks, grabbing his arm.    

“Nonetheless. Stay. Have a drink, lackey.” She hands him a bottle. “Highness. Your highness.” She laughs. “Stay.” He takes the bottle from her hand and watches as she gets uproariously drunk.    

The next day her hangover headache makes her crotchety and sharp tongued, especially to the one who shot her, which she’ll have to apologize for later when her mood’s improved. But the drink’s done it’s job. It’s blurred the edges of her visions, made them seem distant and surreal.    

Like it always did, the drink washes away the blood, the guilt, and the grief.    

But sometimes she can hear it like a whisper in her mind.    

_The Queen of the Dead._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle-up folks. There are _citations_ for this one. 
> 
> The majority of the inspiration was the _Saga of the Völsungs_ , as well as Wagner’s _The Ring Cycle_ , though I’ve never actually seen the full Ring Cycle because I ain’t got that kind of time.
> 
> You can find a free edition of Völsungs on Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1152
> 
> The Myths and Legends Podcast also has a great, entertaining summary of the Völsungs, Episode 3A-3E, so you’ll have to flip back a ways to find it but it’s fantastic! Very easy and fun to listen to, so if you’ve got a long commute or busy-work/housework to do, this is your podcast! https://www.mythpodcast.com/ 
> 
> Very eagle-eyed readers will also see that I stole the name of the older healer from the Völsungs as well: Gudrun. She doesn’t appear in this chapter, but yup, grabbed her name from here. (Next chapter as well, I’ll have something to cite because my Asgardian naming strategy is basically ‘lift character names from the Sagas’ because I don’t have any basis in any sort of Germanic language, unless you could my ‘bastard child of Germanic-Romance’ mother tongue, so it’s really hard to come up with names off the top of my head.)
> 
> If you want to watch _The Ring Cycle,_ good luck. (I’m kidding. It’s just very long, though I’ve heard it’s an experience. I just missed the music school at my university doing a portion of it.) If you, like me, don’t got time for that, here is an amazing and hilarious ‘The Ring Cycle in 2.5 minutes’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgzZ_nLOJJE 
> 
> A big BIG part of this, especially the ending, was lifted from an 11th century poem in the Poetic Eddas called _Helreith Brynhildar._ Read it here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe29.htm 
> 
> (Though the giant in the actual poem is like 'you're chasing after another woman's husband!' and here it's like 'you sold people into slavery!' so I kind of upped the severity of things a bit...)
> 
> The “You will be away…you will be without” is kind of a play on a quote from Netflix’s _The Haunting of Hill House._ (“There is no without.”)
> 
> It’s possibly a bit of a mess, because I was finishing it up as late as last night, while drinking pints at the grad student bar, and I kind of combined a bunch of different things together. Like one of the Valkyrie’s names (Ortlinde) is from Wagner, but that of Brunnhilde’s lover (Sigrún) is from the Eddas. Misuse of mythology and classical texts, I told you guys this would happen.
> 
> I feel like the movies never went in deep enough into mythology, and the really weird ways you can combine a space drama with Viking myths and aesthetics. Both are so rich. So much fun to squish together. 
> 
> Tomorrow’s post, heads up, is either going to be 1) very, very early if I get my shit together before leaving for the airport (unlikely), 2) around the same time as usual, depending on how quickly I get through customs and security, and the strength of the wifi in the terminal (the wifi’s actually quite good in this particularly airport, so decent chance), or 3) very, very late, depending on when I get a chance to sneak away at Thanksgiving. 
> 
> Happy (US) Thanksgiving to all who are celebrating! :-)
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	23. Self-Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Revengers, The Ark. Warnings: domestic violence, murder/suicide
> 
> A dark curse befalls the Ark, turning people against each other.

The ship shudders mightily as it picks up speed, driving through the planet’s atmosphere. Hallbera folds the clothes for which she had bartered some of her apple jam. She is proud of her negotiations. The clothes are far from Asgardian styles, but the fabric is soft and lightly colored, and she found a new cloak for her son.    

“That old one was so full of holes,” She remarks, running her fingers over the wool. “Olvir will be warm. I heard a rumor that the next planet we’re going to stop at has beautiful lakes in the mountains. Beautiful, but cold. But if we dress warmly enough…” Her husband remains silent. Perhaps he is distracted. “Kveldulf? Is something the matter?” Nothing. She keeps puttering.   

They are one of the fortunate few, full families that made it off Asgard and onto their new voyaging home. They had their losses; Hallbera had lost two sisters and their husbands and children, Kveldulf, his parents and cousins. But they were together, their small family. Ready to start anew. Hallbera was even thinking of growing their family. Asgard would need new sons and daughters; there had already been several young lovers to get pregnant since their departure, though Hallbera didn’t know if she wanted to until they reached their destination. She was still uncertain about Earth. The king assured them that they would be welcomed, that they would be safe there, and she wanted to trust in her king, but...she had never been off Asgard before Ragnarok. She fears, and thinks carefully about each step in their journey, though she is growing more used to traveling. She finds she likes it, exploring new planets, watching her son run under foreign skies and pick up new languages and mannerisms. It’s exciting, in a way that the safety of Asgard could never be.    

“I wonder what the climate is like on Earth?” She muses aloud. “Some of the others were discussing this while we were harvesting yesterday, perhaps we should ask the King more about what it’s like-”   

“Will you never be silent, woman!” She stops short, whirling around. Her husband is standing, trembling with rage, in the doorway.    

“You will not speak to me that way.” Her voice is low and dangerous. “I will not tolerate it.”    

“I care not,” He spits. “What you tolerate.”

She draws herself up. “Kveldulf-”   

He strikes her across the face.  
   

Loki wakes late the day after their departure. He had been up late into the night cataloguing their haul, particularly pleased with what they had managed to retrieve on this trip. He’d managed to find a book on the growing of healing herbs and some seeds, finally leaning into the role of healer that his status as the only fully grown mage on board had granted him. He stayed up even later reading by dim witchlight while the others snored around him. He wakes alone.    

He dresses and goes to find the others. Thor and the Valkyrie are still in the mess, sitting and talking with grim expressions on their faces.    

“Have I missed something?” He says as he sits.

Thor manages a smile for him. “Yes, breakfast.”    

“You could have woken me.”    

“We know how late you were up last night. Besides, I saved you a pear.” The Valkyrie tosses it to him.    

“Thank you, lady. Now,” He bites into the pear. “What’s got the two of you sporting such long faces?” They exchange a look. “Come on, out with it.”   

“The Hulk has returned.”

Loki sits up straighter. “Oh.” It feels like a loss. Aside from his general feelings about the Hulk, he’s become used to Bruce Banner’s presence and assistance in the day to day operation of the Ark. He’s sort of going to miss him. “What triggered the transformation?”   

“That’s the weird thing,” the Valkyrie says. “We don’t know. I just woke up and Bruce was gone. Found the Big Guy wandering around.”    

“I would think that something large enough to draw out the Hulk would have aroused someone’s interest.”   

“I put out a general call for information,” Thor says. “Haven’t heard anything back. Some reports of an argument, but further investigation revealed it was a domestic affair, Banner was nowhere near it. We have no idea what caused the change.”    

“That’s concerning.”

Thor nods in agreement but claps him on the shoulder as reassurance anyways. “We’ll figure it out.”    

Loki eats the pear slowly. Dread has settled over him. Something is coming.  
   

Later that night, they’re drinking more than usual. The Valkyrie had scored something almost like mead from an acquaintance at their last stop and they shared with the soldiers she’d started training as a defense force. They have this sort of evening on occasion, especially after departing from a decent market planet. It was awkward at first. Loki bristles at these sorts of social events more than he used to. Even on Sakaar, he was good at mingling in the parties, but now they just drain him and he finds himself wanting to go back to the room and sleep soon after they begin. Thor is even quiet that night, watching the conversation rather than participating.   

The alcohol helps, and the Valkyrie, who commands awe and attention and takes the focus off of the princes. The alcohol especially helps tonight, the booze the Valkyrie brought was especially good and especially strong. Loki nearly forgets the feeling of doom that had dogged him all day.    

He knows, he _knows_ he’s being annoying, but when the young soldier starts grandstanding he can’t help but sneer and pokes holes in his stories.    

“Bodvar, you wouldn’t know a wyvern on sight, let alone have defeated one single-handedly,” Loki drawls.

The young soldier flushes angrily. “Like you would be able-”    

“I would at least be intelligent enough not to blatantly lie-”   

“I am _not_ lying-”   

“Well you’re certainly not telling the truth and wouldn’t I know-”   

“ENOUGH!” Thor’s voice cut across theirs, ringing with such authority that all are instantly silenced.

Loki looks to his brother in shock. “...Thor, I-” Thor’s hand closes on his wrist. “Let me go,” He cries, indignant.    

“I’ve had enough out of you, _witch!_ ”

Loki gasps at the insult, reeling back. Or trying to. Thor’s grip is too tight on his arm. And getting tighter.    

“Thor!” He looks at his brother’s face and sees nothing. Nothing but rage. “Let me go.”   

“Majesty,” The Valkyrie sounds suddenly sober. “I think you should take a minute…” Thor’s hand tightens further and it really starts to hurt.    

“Brother, stop!” But still Thor’s face does not change. There is nothing of his brother there.

The bones in his forearm give way with a sharp _crack_ and a sudden shock of pain, followed by a tingling numbness in his hand. Loki barely makes a sound, nothing but a soft, shocked inhale. Thor’s expression still does not soften, growing even more furious. The Valkyrie gets to her feet.    

“Okay, Thor,” She says. “You’ve made your point, now let him go and we can talk about this.” Thor stands and grabs Loki’s other hand. Loki is in too much shock, frozen in surprise at Thor’s sudden violence, to move.    

When the first bone snaps, the smallest, he starts to struggle.    

“Let me go, let me go,” He cries, trying to wrench out of Thor’s grip even as it makes the pain spike. The second bone breaks and he yelps. A third, and he realizes something awful. This isn’t Thor grabbing him and hurting him inadvertently in anger, this is deliberate. This is calculated. “Brother, _please_ , stop!” He tries to pull out of Thor’s hands, fully knowing he’s probably injuring himself further. He can’t feel his left hand below the break and the bones in his right grind together.   

“Thor, let him go, right now,” The Valkyrie says. “I said, enough!”

The expression on Thor’s face clears in an instant and he releases Loki. He stumbles back at his sudden freedom, cradling his arms to his chest. The room is dead silent for a moment. Then Thor tries to speak. “Loki-”    

“Don’t touch me!” He snarls, curling in on himself. His world reduces to white panic.

The Valkyrie tries to approach him, slowly, with her hands cautious and soothing. Like she was calming a wild animal. “Loki, let me-”    

“No! Don’t fucking touch me!” She stops, but doesn’t back off.    

He can’t take it. The panic is overtaking him, dragging him under and he does the only thing he can think of and teleports away.  
   

He lands hard in the storeroom, rolling, then curls up in a ball and waits for his hands to heal.    

And panics, of course. It takes a while for him to come to, to that nauseous, weak feeling he always gets after one of these.    

“Damn,” He breathes, dropping his head to the floor. He hears footsteps. Apparently, he was not as transparent in his intended destination as he thought.    

It’s the Valkyrie. She looks haunted, suddenly sober, as she crouches down next to him. “It wasn’t him,” She says. “He says he doesn’t remember doing it.”

Loki looks at her. “The one who held me, after I fell,” He says. “Once broke every bone in my hands. Every one. And when they healed he did it again. And again.”   

“No one’s torturing you here. That’s not what’s happening,” She says softly. She reaches out and rests her hand on his arm when he doesn’t flinch away. “Something...came over him. He says he doesn’t remember anything.”   

“Isn’t that worse?”   

“No. It means he’s not going to do it again, and well…we don’t know what it was yet, but we can fix this. We need your help to figure it out.” She helps him sit up. “And it means you don’t have to heal alone, in the dark, in this dusty storeroom. Let’s go back to our room, and we’ll figure it out together.” Loki nods.   

They return to their room, where Thor is pacing.    

He looks ravaged, drawn. Loki takes one look at him and knows he is telling the truth. Would have probably known it right away, had the panic not clouded his senses.

“I didn’t, I wasn’t-” Thor stammers. “I’m so sorry.” Loki leans minutely closer, an invitation, and Thor takes it, taking him so gently in his arms. Loki returns the embrace and wraps his aching arms around Thor’s waist, resting his head on his shoulder. Thor is shaking, breath coming hard and Loki lets him hold him, and whisper desperate apologies. Loki gradually unwinds, relaxing into Thor’s chest.    

Out of the corner of his eye he sees the Valkyrie watching with sharp eyes. It makes him feel better.  
       

“Did you hear about the fight last night?”    

“The king and his brother always fight, they’ll have made up by breakfast.”    

“I heard it wasn’t a normal fight, I heard the prince was truly hurt.”   

“Do you really think the king could truly hurt him, he’s his only family, I mean-”   

“I wasn’t talking about that fight.”   

“Oh?”    

“Gunnhild and her cousin. They were shrieking at each other all night.”    

“No, not that one.”   

“There was that other one…”   

“That one. Hallbera.”    

“Has anyone talked to her?”  

“We should check in, it’s what we should do for each other, in times like these.”    

“Of course.”   

“I’ll stop by after lunch.”  
   

The automatic lights click on in the morning and Loki sits straight up in bed. Overnight, the ache in his bones had dulled and the remaining confused panic had cleared from his head.   

“We have to talk about last night,” He says. Thor blinks his eyes open, face instantly guilty when he processes Loki’s words. The Valkyrie groans on his other side. The three of them had collapsed into bed together soon after his return.    

“Shut up, lackey. It’s still early.”    

“But we need to-”   

“There will be time, later. After more sleep.”    

“But-”

The Valkyrie drags him back down. “Sleep.”

He tolerates the manhandling, until he’s pinned back between them. “We really should-”  

“Hush, Loki,” Thor murmurs.   

“Are you alright?” Loki asks. 

“What? Am I alright? Are _you_ alright?”    

“Of course, my bones healed hours ago. But to have magic touch your mind like that...”   

“You didn’t seem so sure it was magic last night.”   

“Well, I was…also not quite myself.” He shivers. “It reminded me…it doesn’t matter. But I know you brother, you are not one for sadism.” Thor frowns. “It should have been obvious, when you were breaking my hand. You’ve been known to forgot your own strength, and hurt me without meaning - stop looking at me like that, I usually deserved it. Whenever you’ve done that, it was to _stop_ me, to contain me, never to cause pain for the pleasure of it.” _That was for others,_ he thinks, and suppresses another shiver. “It was clearly something…else. And I have to figure out what.”   

“Later,” Thor says. “Let us rest a little longer.” Loki tolerates Thor toying with his hair. He would complain, but he can feel how Thor’s hand shakes, so he lets him.  
   

Loki does a thorough examination of his brother with magic, listens carefully to the Valkyrie’s report of what she found among the people, and pronounces his verdict.

“It’s a curse.”    

“A curse? Are you sure?”   

“Positive. Something dark, targeted. Whether or not it was cast over the whole ship, or was meant for just one person and got loose, it’s a curse.”    

“What will it do?”    

“Isn’t it obvious?” At their blank stares, he continues. “It’s meant to turn us against each other. Turn loved one against loved one. If it was cast over the whole ship, it’s very clever. People would just think it was restlessness at being confined in close quarters, making people argue. I think if it hadn’t been for us, it might have torn the ship apart. But,” Loki smiles. “It chose the wrong victims.”    

“Can you break it?” Thor asks. Unspoken, the second half of his question: _before I hurt you again._    

“I should. In time. For now, we should have people patrol the quarters, make sure none of the fights get too violent.”  
   

“Your majesty,” The woman bows low. “I don’t mean to complain but…”

Thor waves off her deference. “Nonsense, I’m here for your concerns. What is it?”

She hesitates. “There’s a very foul smell. Coming from the gardens. Now, I don’t know if you picked up a new fertilizer at that last market but it’s really making quite a few of us ill…”

Thor’s smile is strained. “I assure you, we will look into it.”  
   

The three of them descend to the artificial greenhouses. At once, the Valkyrie claps her hand over her nose and mouth.    

“You know what that smell is.”

Thor nods. “Unfortunately, though I don’t ever believe I’ve smelt it this bad.”    

“Sometimes someone would die, falling through the wormholes on Sakaar. They’d get buried in the trash and not found for days. That was the worst smell.”   

“That’s disgusting,” Loki says, wrinkling his nose. “We’re fortunate Asgard prefers a swift burning, along with plenty of flowers.”   

“Burning? We never burned-”  

“Over here,” Thor says. He’s followed the stench and stops short. “I think it’s coming from those.”    

“Prepare yourselves,” The Valkyrie says. “Have you ever seen something so fowl as a body that’s been in water a few days?”

Loki, looking a little green, walks over to the tanks of water used to hydrate the plants. He gasps. “It’s that one.” He points.    

“Stand back.” She opens the tank and a rush of brownish water flows from the tank. The smell immediately increases tenfold and Thor swallows down a gag.    

“Definitely Asgardian,” The Valkyrie says, examining the body. What was once a body. “Probably a woman.”    

“I’m going to be sick,” Loki says. There’s a rustle in the stalks behind them. They whirl, Loki summoning a dagger, but the sound turns out to be a child, peering out with a tear streaked face.    

“That’s my mommy!” The child cries. “Daddy put her in there, I waited but she didn’t come out.”    

“Get him out of here,” The Valkyrie says. “Get him out of here now.” Loki banishes the dagger and rushes forward, grabbing the child in his arms.    

“No, no, I don’t want to leave my mommy!”    

“Close your eyes,” Loki says. “You do not wish to see.”  
   

From the child, they get his name and his quarters. From the neighbors, they get the story. There’d been fights, for days. No one wanted to intrude. No one had seen the woman - Hallbera - for a few days. Nor the husband.    

They order a full search of the ship for the murderer, but it’s too late.    

The body is found in one of the airlocks, eyes and tongue bulging out of its face. Security camera footage shows that Kveldulf had walked there calmly from the gardens, sealed the airlock, and depressurized it.    

“I must amend my assessment of the curse’s aims,” Loki says quietly when the footage stops. The others say nothing.  
   

The next day, Thor seeks him out for advice. They talk for some time, going over and over the details of their predicament. Loki laments his lack of reference books and Thor worries over what to tell the people about the murder.   

“The Valkyrie said that a family had volunteered to foster the child,” Loki says. “We still have to figure out what to do with the remains, it seems our funeral customs will need some amending...Thor?” A chill descends on the room.    

Thor grabs his arm and the way he grips him tells Loki the curse is back. Loki stuffs down the panic, keeps his voice even.    

“Brother,” He says without looking at him. “Brother, you have to fight it.”

Thor suddenly shoves him, pinning him up against the wall and forcing him to look at him. Just like the first night, Thor’s face is empty of recognition, just fury. “Fight what?” He snarls. He slams Loki back into the wall once. “The only monster I see here to fight is you.”    

“This isn’t you,” Loki cries. “ _Fight it._ ” But Thor strikes him across the face in lieu of response. Loki tastes blood.    

He summons a knife, plunging it into Thor’s side, and instantly Thor drops him with a grunt. He runs.    

There’s a closet, and he slips inside, tracked by Thor’s pounding footsteps and angry shouting. He slams the door shut just in time and wraps his magic around the doorknob, pinning the door shut with his seidr.    

“Open this door, _wretch,_ ” Thor screams, the metal bowing under his fists. Heart pounding, Loki kneels at the door, holding fast to the magic and shutting his eyes. He tries to reach out, investigate the curse as it consumes his brother, but even the momentary distraction almost makes him slip. The door opens a crack and Loki sees a spark of lightning through the gap. Loki jolts in terror and focuses on holding the door shut.    

Thor reigns down abuses on his head. He squeezes his eyes closed and tries not to listen. The curse pulls from Thor’s memories, and the screamed insults get horrifyingly personal.    

“It’s not him, it’s not him, it’s not him,” He whispers over and over again.  
       

He doesn’t know when it stops. Only that he realizes through his whispered mantra that there is silence now. No oppressive presence on the other side of the door.  

He should get up. He should go, but what if this is just to lull him into a false sense of security? Lure him out of the closet and into Thor’s clutches. So he stays, crouched in front of the door until his legs cramp, keeping the door tightly shut.   

A knock startles him. “It’s me,” The Valkyrie says. “It’s over. You can open the door.” Reluctantly, he releases the magic and steps back. She slips inside. “Are you okay?” Loki nods.    

“Is Thor alright? I stabbed him. Again.”    

“He’s fine. Well. As fine as can be expected. Doesn’t remember any of it again, and the wound’s already closed. He thinks that…” She trails off.   

“What?”    

“He thinks he should give you some space.”

“Space.”    

“He’s afraid of himself around you. He sent me here to tell you that until we can figure out how to break this curse, he won’t see you.”   

“Oh.” It makes sense, but something very small inside Loki rebels against it.    

“You and I are going to keep investigating. And I’m not to let you out of my sight.”    

“Okay. Well then, lady,” Loki summons a smile, though it takes effort. “I suppose we best get back to work.”  
   

Two days pass, with no progress. Loki could scream in frustration. He _knows_ he’s read about something like this before, but without Asgard’s library he’s completely lost.    

He doesn’t know where Thor is. He sleeps with the Valkyrie in their quarters, and barely gets any rest.  
   

There’s another murder. A weaver holds her sister’s head under the bathwater until her struggles stop. Then she hangs herself from the rafters.    

The people are starting to get restless and Heimdall advises they make for a port. Thor agrees and they start towards the nearest inhabited planet, the emergency landing request already queued for when they’re in range.  
   

“I’m going to go talk to the Big Guy again,” The Valkyrie announces while Loki is bent over one of his only magic books.    

“He’s not going to remember anything.”

She lets out a short breath. “He might let Bruce out, and _he_ might remember. It’s at least doing _something_ , not just rereading the same damned book for the thousandth time.”    

“Have it your way,” Loki responds, not looking up.    

“Do _not_ leave this room.”    

“I won’t.” She leaves and he breathes a sigh of relief. She’d dogged him for days, and it feels blissfully peaceful to just be alone.    

He keeps reading, vision blurring from tiredness. There’s a quiet noise behind him.    

“Well? Did the beast cede to the scientist yet?”    

The blow knocks him out of his chair and onto the floor.    

He hits hard, stunned. Blood flows from his split temple onto his face, stinging in his eyes and dripping salty into his mouth. A booted foot, connecting with his ribcage. The air is knocked from his lungs and he can’t draw another breath. A hand fists in his hair, dragging him up.    

“Thor,” He gasps. “Nnnn-”    

“Silence!” Loki reaches out tentatively with his magic and is choked by the suffocating blackness. The deaths this curse had already claimed strengthened it. There is no budging Thor’s hand in his hair, even as he strikes out at his arm with his hands.    

Thor drags him through the halls, saying nothing this time, not even insults. Loki’s head clears a bit, enough for him to talk.    

“Thor, what are you doing?”   

“It is time to end this. It is time for me to do what Father could not.”    

“What are you talking - ”    

“You will meet the sentence for treason, witch. I will have your head as price for your crimes.”    

“Thor, you _fool_ ,” Loki cries, tightening his hands on Thor’s forearm. “Let me go.” He drags him into the central hall, throwing Loki down. He lands hard on his stomach and doesn’t try to rise.   

“On your knees.” Blinking the blood from his eyes, he sees that Thor has one of the big swords from Sakaar gripped tightly in his fist. “ON. YOUR KNEES.” Loki does get to his knees.

And then he lunges, the knife coming to his hand in a breath. He sinks it into Thor’s side, but his brother has no reaction this time. He wrenches it out but then Thor swings the sword and Loki has to fall back. He leaves an illusion in place and aims for the nerves in Thor’s sword arm. The curse sees around the trick, or maybe that part’s just Thor, finally wise to his tactics. He catches Loki’s forearm and twists until he drops the knife.    

“You will face your execution with dignity, Laufeyson.” Thor strikes him across the head with the pommel, making his ears ring, then his knee meets Loki’s groin and he goes down with a cry of pain.    

Thor crosses behind him and shoves the back of his head until he’s parallel to the ground.

“Have any last words?”    

“Thor, please, this isn’t you.”    

“Oh, it is. And this should have been done a long, long time ago. Finally we will be free of you.” Thor raises the sword high over his head. Loki desperately tries to grasp his magic around the smothering curse.    

The blow doesn’t come. Instead, there’s the sound of ringing metal.    

“Thought I told you not to leave the room,” The Valkyrie says. “Now, Thor, I know I’m supposed to protect the throne and all, and I really don’t want to hurt you, but I think you’d best back off.”    

“You are equally the traitor-”   

“Guess that’s not going to work,” And she attacks. They clash, the Valkyrie managing to drive Thor farther away from Loki. But the curse is too strong. It makes Thor impervious to the blows she strikes and seeps away her strength. On a normal day, they might be evenly matched, but Thor is gaining on her fast and Loki can hear the screaming of the curse in his head.    

He has to think. He has to break it, and fast. With a prayer to the Norns, he takes up the knife he had summoned to stab Thor and starts carving into the ground.    

He has no idea if it will work. It’s a simple curse-breaker, but he whispers the words with a desperation that fuels it.    

There’s one more thing, one thing that can make it powerful enough to maybe, maybe stop this thing.    

Magic likes sacrifice. It likes to be worshiped and it likes its offerings and it likes it even better when the offering is a body, the dwelling place of a soul full of desperation and life and pain and hope.    

Loki stands in the center of the sigil and without hesitation, draws two lines the long way down his left forearm. The cuts on his right are less clean. He must have severed a nerve with the first cuts, the way half the fingers on his left hand are numb and unresponsive. He’s shaking too, but manages to make two jagged cuts on the right.    

With final binding words and blood flowing freely out of him, dripping to the floor, the curse breaks.    

The darkness snaps, clearing in an instant. The sounds of the fight cease, leaving only gasping breaths.    

Loki doesn’t remember falling, or lying down, but he’s suddenly flat on his back and freezing cold. “It worked,” He mumbles. “Can’t believe…it worked.”   

“ _Loki!_ ” A voice calls from far off. He opens his mouth to answer but there’s nothing left.  
   

He dreams of being left on the rock. It’s so cold, the wind whipping around him. All he can see is snow and ice and darkness. But Odin will come. That’s what happened, isn’t it? He was left as an offering, a sacrifice, to the Jotun gods, because he had been born small and a shapeshifter and they thought his cursed birth was a sign that they had displeased the divine. If they ridded themselves of the shapeshifting runt, they could stand a chance in this war against Asgard. If they sacrificed this cursed infant, they could _win_.    

But it didn’t work. Asgard defeated them anyways and Odin came and picked up the baby, which changed its skin to match this new person, equally out of inquisitiveness as survival. Odin took the baby to his family, lied to it, hurt it, but also loved it, held it, called it son, even at the end.    

Odin doesn’t come in his dream and Loki is left on the cold rock, clothed only in a ragged grey cloth, as the cold seeps into him, devours him.  
   

He wakes with a start, still ice cold, but in a soft bed.    

“Did it work?” He says through chattering teeth. “Did it work?”    

“It worked.” Thor’s voice is laden with guilt.    

“Get some rest, highness,” The Valkyrie says. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”    

“Cold, it’s so cold.” He can’t stop shivering.    

“Can we get him another blanket?”    

“I’ll go get the ones from our room.”

When the Valkyrie’s gone, Loki gropes for Thor’s hand. He hears Thor’s sharp intake of breath, but can only feel relief at the warmth. He grasps it as tight as he can, though his grip is still weak. “You’re warm.”    

“I know.”    

“Please, I…I just want to be warm.” Thor still hesitates. Loki tugs on his hand. “Lie down?” He finally gives in, shifting Loki until he has enough room to lay next to him. Loki rolls into his arms, pressing into his chest like he could crawl inside. “Better.”

Thor strokes his hair. “Why did you do that? Why _would_ you do that?”   

“C-couldn’t think of another way. M-maybe if I could’ve figured out…but it was too late. It was growing s-so strong. It needed…sacrifice.”    

“All that blood.” Thor presses his face to the top of his head. “You have to stop doing this to me.”  

“S-sorry.”    

“Don’t.” Slowly, Loki stops shivering. He drifts off, only stirring a bit when the Valkyrie returns and piles more blankets on top of them, sealing in the body heat Thor generates.    

He dreams no more of the rock. Instead, he dreams of a fireplace on Asgard and the sound of someone humming while they weaved.  
   

“Ouch, oh man, I’m starving. What happened? I don’t even remember what set the Other Guy off.”   

“Don’t worry about it.”   

“Val, this is serious.”   

“You won’t like it. It was magic.”    

“Oh perfect. Jesus, Loki looks like a ghost. Well, more than usual.”    

“Yeah, I think losing like 80% of your blood volume will do that to a guy.”    

“…Magic or no, I think I’m going to need this story.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a really literal take on self-sacrifice with this one...
> 
> I know, I know, two 'long and weird' ones in a row. Also when I was doing a last review before posting today (in the airport, did you think I was kidding? ;-) ), I realized that this one and 'Friendly Fire' shared some common tropes, even though I wrote 'Self-Sacrifice' almost a month ago and 'Friendly Fire' this week. Weird! I guess you guys now just know how much I love the 'mind control the twists memories and beliefs about the self as an added means of torment' trope. Can that be a trope? It's so specific. But clearly, I'm into it. 
> 
> Citation: All of the Asgardian names today come from _Egil's Saga_. I tried to find a free version online but I didn't have any luck in the five minutes I spent searching, but you should be able to find it in any collection of the Sagas. 
> 
> Happy Thanksgiving! I'm very thankful for all of you! Anyone who's read, commented, kudos-ed...thank you! 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	24. Drowning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Revengers, The Ark, Warnings: discussion of past suicide attempts. (Plus, as a direct follow up to yesterday, all of those warnings continue to apply but are less directly referenced in this episode.)
> 
> (Direct sequel to 'Self-Sacrifice.') The emotional fallout of 'Self-Sacrifice.' Bruce Banner thinks they all might be drowning.

At the age of twelve, Bruce Banner nearly drowned in a frozen lake. They had been playing on the ice and it had cracked open and he’d plunged into the freezing water. It had been agony, the cold on his skin, pulling him down. When he looked back up to try and swim to the surface, all he had seen was the sheet of intact ice. He was trapped down there, in the dark and the cold, and he opened his mouth and his lungs breathed in of their own volition-   

He woke up later that day, in a hospital bed, with his mother hysterically crying beside him.

When he first transformed into the Hulk, it felt just like that day, except red hot instead of cold. He was drowning in boiling water, looking up for the surface and only seeing a barrier that he could not cross. It felt like that for a long time, but by the battle of New York something had changed. He wasn’t drowning anymore, he was swimming, voluntarily diving into the depths and ceding his body to the Hulk. He turned away from Steve Rogers in New York and it was like diving into a warm bath of rage. Sakaar was…nothingness. Hulk had the wheel and it seemed like he would never surface. But he did, and on the ship it was like swimming again, the Hulk and he trading back and forth as needed to protect himself, protect his friends, and this ship.    

Until the Curse.    

 

Loki dreams of falling, but it always sounds more like drowning. When the nightmares wake him, he gasps for air like he’s starved for it, gripping onto Thor like a life preserver.    

“I can’t breathe,” He always says first, before anything else.    

“Hush, you can,” Thor whispers back, still half asleep himself. “I know you can.” It always takes a few minutes of soothing to ease Loki back to calm, to return his breaths to a smooth and even rhythm. Bruce hears Thor’s voice as a low murmur, and the sound of rustling fabric as he rubs a circle on his brother’s back. Then their whispers as they talk before easing back into sleep.    

It’s practically a routine now. Bruce is barely disturbed by it, as it becomes almost background noise in their room, as regular as the Valkyrie’s snoring. But back when it first happened, it had been an interesting revelation. The next morning he looked at Loki and realized they had more in common than he’d thought.  
   

“…Magic or no, I think I’m going to need this story.”

The Valkyrie smiles, pours him a drink and tells him.    

“That is fucked. _up_.” He says, grabbing the bottle when she’s finished.    

“I know. Thor is still beating himself up about it.”   

“It wasn’t his fault.”    

“He knows that. And Loki keeps insisting on it, but it’s going to take a while for things to get better.”    

That night in their room it is Thor who wakes with nightmares. He wakes alone, Loki too fatigued from the lingering blood loss and magical exhaustion to be stirred. Bruce listens as Thor’s ragged breathing evens out and he settles down.    

The next morning, Loki approaches him, looking a little awkward. He’s still disturbingly pale, looking half a ghost. “I apologize for having to ask you to do this, Banner,” He says. “But as I cannot do it myself and I’d rather not burden Thor further…”    

“Yeah, shoot, what’s up?”    

“The wounds in my arms. I know you’ve heard the story, and you have some experience…if you could…”    

“‘Course.” They sit in a quiet room. Loki lays his wrists on a table and barely winces when Bruce peels back the bandages. The wounds are ugly, deep slices into his flesh. “Why haven’t you healed this yet?”    

“Don’t know. Could be the blood loss, magic’s too tied up trying to replenish the blood to heal. Or the way I made the wounds. The point was to be a sacrifice. I should have known it would not have been so easy to heal. At least the nerves have reconnected.”    

“Show me. Flex your hands. Now make a fist, okay good, yeah you’re right, it looks like the nerves are okay.” Banner takes up a cloth and the basin of warm water they brought. “Sorry if this stings.” Loki holds very still as he cleans the wounds. “It takes a lot of determination to do this to yourself. Especially once you’d cut the first side.”   

“I was very determined to break the curse.”    

“Thanks for that, by the way.” They fall to silence for a few minutes. “Did you know you were going to survive?” Loki doesn’t answer that but the way he tenses a little tells Bruce all he needs to know. “I tried this once. When I first turned into the Hulk, after it became clear there was no cure, I kept trying…this method didn’t even come close to working. Didn’t even make it through one cut on my wrists before the Hulk took over.”    

“You tried several methods?”    

“Yeah, kept trying to trick the Hulk. Never worked.”    

“Well, I would advise against throwing oneself into the Void. That was exceedingly unpleasant.”    

“That’s what you dream about?” Bruce asks quietly.    

“Among other things.”

Bruce starts to tape the bandages back into place.    

“Is everything alright?” Thor’s voice startles them both. He leans on the door frame, watching them with a haunted look in his eye.    

“Of course, brother,” Loki says. “I just wanted a second opinion.”    

“Do you guys do blood transfusions on Asgard?” Bruce asks. “I’m a little worried about how much blood you’ve lost.”    

“We do but-”   

“But I’m not Asgardian.” Loki finishes. “A blood transfusion from anyone on the ship would likely kill me. No, Dr. Banner, I’ll be fine. Thank you for your assistance.” He rises, covering the bandages again with his sleeves. He goes to Thor without another backward glance and the brothers leave Bruce to clean up the bloodied cloths.  
   

After dinner, the guilt worming away at him, he slides onto the bench next to Loki.    

“Hey man, sorry about bring that stuff up earlier.”

Loki raises an eyebrow. “What 'stuff?'”   

“You know the…low point stuff.”    

“What, your attempts at ending your own life?”    

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have-”   

“Why not?”    

“You know, it’s not exactly a light topic, especially for someone who just almost died.”    

“Oh. Yes, I understand. But it’s alright. No one talks about it. Thor hasn’t mentioned my fall at all since it happened, except once, when we crashed a few months ago. It was…good to talk about so openly.”    

“Yeah, people get awkward with me too. I mentioned it to the team, way back when you were being all ‘crazy dictator’ and it’s been kind of radio silence since then. You know when I was a kid, I almost drowned.”

Loki raises an eyebrow at the abrupt shift in topic. “Oh?”    

“Yeah and it seems…it seems unrelated but sometimes I just feel like I’m still drowning. And I think…I’m figuring you still feel like you’re falling.”

Loki looks at his hands instead of looking at Bruce. “To counter your point,” Loki says. “Perhaps we’ve gotten used to it. Drowning, falling. The problem is the people who…aren’t. Used to it.”

Bruce knows precisely who Loki is thinking of. “Thor seems really messed up over all this.”

Loki sighs. “Thor has taken to feeling guilty about everything. He will get over this. He will endure.”

Bruce glances at Thor, talking with the Valkyrie and still looking drawn. “You should talk to him,” He says. “There are people that I wish I could have spoken to openly about the stuff I was going through. I didn’t, and who knows if I’ll get a second chance.”    

“Hm,” Is all Loki has to say to that.  
   

But much later, after he’s spent some time hanging out with Korg and the Sakaarans, he tries to return to their room and stops when he hears voices from inside.   

“I imagined, a thousand times, since then,” Thor’s voice sounds uncharacteristically thick. “If I had just managed to grab your hand instead, if I had just been that much faster, if I had been there when you needed me…”    

“I don’t know that it would have mattered. Thor, you don’t understand, I couldn’t see any other way out-”

Bruce backs carefully away. He goes to the small bar they’ve been using as kind of an unofficial headquarters. The Valkyrie is there, drinking alone.    

“So the princes finally decided to air all their problems,” She says, taking a swig from their bottle.   

“Yeah, that may have been my fault,” Bruce says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I might have…prodded them in that direction.”     

“I’d have preferred it if they didn’t use our room.” She sighs. “But they definitely needed it before they self-destructed. Want a drink?”    

“Why not, we’re not going to get to bed any time soon.”

She hands him the bottle. “Had they moved on from the adoption thing?”   

“It sounded like they were on the fall from the bifrost.”

The Valkyrie lets her head fall forward onto the table. “We’re going to have to sleep in the floor in here.”   

“Sorry.”

The Valkyrie groans.    

About a half hour of drinking later, the Valkyrie asks, “So how does it feel, when you’re the Hulk?”

Bruce shrugs. “It depends. Not pleasant, usually. Sometimes it’s okay, like when we were fighting back in New York. This whole curse thing?” The Valkyrie raises an eyebrow. “It kind of felt like drowning.”    

“Yeah,” She says. “I know exactly what you mean.” She taps her bottle against Bruce’s.    

They don’t end up having to sleep on the floor. Late that night, tipsy and a little giggly, they slip back into their room and flop onto the bed.    

“Night, little guy,” Valkyrie says, patting his shoulder.    

“Night, Val,” He whispers back.    

They all sleep through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the chapter lateness, but I did the thing again where I slept for eleven hours. Thanksgiving dinner, man...
> 
> I was also trying to rework this chapter this morning. It's hard to write the emotional fallout and some of the conversation shifts were really awkward. I'm going with they're all just awkward little ducks who don't know how to have serious emotional conversations. 
> 
> Thor & Loki finally talk about the last few years and their issues...and it's all off screen. XD If you hate me for that, you're going to hate me _even more_ tomorrow. 
> 
> Have a good weekend!
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	25. Restraints

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Loki. The Raft. Warnings: dehumanizing language, threat of execution, the restraints depicted are a bit...claustrophobic, that probably my best description. 
> 
> After Tony Stark calls the cavalry. Thor and Loki are processed into the Raft. 
> 
> [Oof folks, this one got a little weird. If you want to skip the really intense restraint description stuff, stop reading when Thor leaves.]

Loki isn’t really concerned until they’re separated. They’d spent the ride to…wherever it was that the Midgardian authorities were taking them, in tense silence, hands cuffed behind their backs and blindfolded. They were sat on the same bench, so Loki was able to press their shoulders together. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to take comfort, or give it. Probably both. The guards had stopped Thor from trying to talk to him, but at least they don’t try to pull them apart. Until their destination.    

They take him to a room and remove the blindfold. It’s a grey tiled room, with two doors and a single chair in the center. The guards stay on either side of the door, holding their weapons at the ready. The bonds on his magic aren’t as airtight as on Sanctuary, so he’s able to reach out and feel a little of their prison. Thor is in a neighboring room. They’re clearly soundproofed because he can feel from Thor’s energy that he’s shouting at someone, but he can hear nothing. He reaches out further and feels staff workers, indifferent, then a layer down the ghosts of desperation that cling to prison walls. It makes his stomach flip. He finds the edge-   

It’s underwater. They’re underwater. And sinking. They’re going to bury them in water.    

Before he can really dwell on that, the door opens and the man who had arrested them - the one Stark had called Ross - enters, looking very flushed and furious. He takes a few deep breaths, hands on his hips, staring at Loki.    

“You know, I was strongly in favor of executing you immediately. A lot of people were. But a lot more people still believe that Thor can be convinced to work _with_ us rather than against us. Killing you would ruin that.” So they mean to use him as a hostage, to ensure his brother’s cooperation. He’s struggling to find a fundamental difference between what Thanos had been trying to do to them, and what this Ross was suggesting. “So you’re going away, for a long time," the man continues. "And you’re not going to struggle, or try to escape, or hurt anyone, because maybe the people who think Thor can be saved…maybe they’ll change their minds if the costs are too high. Do you understand?” Loki says nothing. “I said: do you understand?”    

“Yes,” Loki hisses.    

“Good. Now you be a good little monster and cooperate while we get you ready.” _Monster_. The word echoes in his mind as the door slams shut and the water beats at the walls of their prison.    

The burnt out, hopeless exhaustion overtakes him then, like on Sanctuary. They probably hadn’t even needed to threaten him with Thor, he would have rolled over and obeyed just from the sheer lack of will to fight. Thanos was right; he was made to be ruled.    

A younger soldier enters, with a pile of clothes. He unlocks the handcuffs.

“Undress,” He commands. “And get in the shower there.” The water is ice cold, pounding down on his skin. He’s given a towel to dry and a band to tie back his hair. He manages to gather the energy for a small rebellion then, taking his own time to braid a single thin section of his hair, before pulling the rest of it into a loose knot. The frustrated guard shifts his weight between his feet impatiently but doesn’t rush him.    

They photograph him stark naked, from all angles, and measure his height and weight before they let him dress. The clothes they give him are thin and shapeless, dark blue. They take his pulse, his temperature, tittering with interest at how low it was. They take blood from his arm. He tries to jerk away from that but is silenced into compliance with a gentle reminder about his brother’s place. He stays tense as they fill three vials with his blood. They take his fingerprints, his palm print, scrapings from the inside of his mouth. He is poked and prodded and palpating and begins to feel like a doll, to be moved and manipulated at will.    

None speak to him, except for the young guard who gives him basic instructions. The scientists talk over his head and he doesn’t have the energy to pay attention to them. They make recorded notes. He is called ‘the subject’ or ‘the prisoner’ or ‘it’. Never his name. Rarely ‘he’.   

When they have collected what they wanted, the guard makes him stand with his back to the wall, hands on his head. He looks uncertain. When the scientists leave, he turns back to Loki.    

“They’re going to bring in your brother now, so he can say goodbye to you.” Loki’s heart sinks. “You have to remember what the Secretary said. What will happen if either of you try to escape or otherwise attack us. Do you understand?” Loki almost says nothing, but remembers Ross’s insistence on his answer.    

“Yes.”

Thor is brought in, dressed identically. “Brother,” He says, rushing for him.    

“You’re not supposed to touch,” The guard says. Thor stops short, hands falling at his sides and balling into fists.    

“Thor, it’s okay,” Loki’s vision is blurring. “Thor, it’s right. I am a monster, this is how it should be.”   

“Loki, stop! You are not a monster.” Thor’s hands come up but stop short, like he’s aching to touch Loki. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll find us a way out of this, just as we found our way off Sanctuary. Just as we’ve survived a thousand times before. I promise, we’ll be together again soon.”

Loki’s arms tire and he drops them to his side. The guard looks like he’s going to tell him to put them back up, but he hesitates when he sees the look on Loki's face. “I’m sorry they’re doing this to you.”    

“Loki, I should be the one who is sorry. And I am. These were my friends…I had no idea the situation had gotten this bad while I was gone. If I had known, I would have never brought you here, or else I would have run with you so much earlier.”    

“Time’s up.” Thor’s face crumples and he touches Loki's neck. "You're not supposed to-" Thor ignores him completely, throwing his arms around Loki’s neck, and burying his face in his hair. Loki returns the embrace, eyes drifting closed.    

“I love you. It’s going to be okay,” Thor whispers in his ear. Loki just nods, and clings. Thor kisses his hair one last time, then pulls back. He runs his fingers down the braid as it falls over his shoulder. One last warm press of his hand to his neck, thumb tracing the line of his jaw.    

Then Thor is drawn away by the guards, leaving Loki feeling cold.    

“Hands up, back against the wall.” The guard says and he gets back into position. The door slams behind them, making Loki jump. “They’re going to lock you up now. You will be fed twice a day, allowed out of bindings once a day to walk and use the bathroom. If you speak to anyone, if you resist at all, you will no longer be allowed out of bindings. You will be fed through a tube in your stomach, given water through an IV. Do you understand?”    

“Yes.”    

“Your cell is in the deepest level. The lights in your cell will be on a timer, twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness. You will have no visitors.”    

“I’m going to go mad,” Loki’s voice cracks. The guard says nothing in return to that.    

“Do you have any questions?”    

“Where will Thor be?”

The guard’s expression falters again. “He will still be on the Raft, a cell just a few levels down from this one.”    

“Will he be bound like this?”

The guard hesitates. “He will be chained, but not bound in the way you will be. He will be allowed out to attend official functions, perform whatever services that are needed by the World Security Council. He can earn rewards and lessened security with good behavior.”    

“Okay.” Loki nods, trembling a little. “I’m ready.”    

Other attendants bring in the restraints. The main one is a rough gray garment with buckles and long sleeves. They have him thread his arms through the sleeves and tighten cuffs around his wrists. They wrap his arms around his back and secure them there with a series of straps and mechanized locks. One brings forth a metal circle, a collar.    

“We’ve designed this to dampen our prisoners’ extra abilities. We’re working on an enhanced version, but this should be sufficient for now." It snaps around his neck and dampens just enough of his magic to make him uncomfortable. Then the muzzle, which makes his pulse race and his stomach drop. But he does not complain, though he instinctively turns his head away when they put it to his face. Someone holds his skull firmly.    

“Open your mouth. Do it.” He complies with a ragged breath and the mouthpiece is thrust inside. The muzzle is equipped with a piece of rubber that presses his tongue to the bottom of his mouth and creates a layer between his teeth. “Bite down. Bite down!” He does it, after a moment’s hesitation. The muzzle is buckled around the back of his head and tightened so it fits snug around his face. He can’t even budge his jaw.    

It’s slowly dawning on him that _this_ is going to be his reality for the foreseeable future. This was how he was going to feel every day, all day, but for a small respite to eat and piss every day. He feels as though he can’t take a deep breath. The guards entirely ignore him. They shackle his ankles together and two guards take his arms.

Their walk is slow and stumbling, the chains on his ankles making his gait short and awkward. They get in an elevator and begin to descend.    

They drop, further and further down, into this watery prison. True to their word, they are deep underwater when they finally stop and escort him to a clean, white cell.

It is completely featureless, three walls white tile, the fourth glass. The glass slides away, into the wall, when one of the guards presses a hand to a keypad on the wall. There are chains attached to either side of the cell, one affixed to a loop of leather.    

“On your knees,” The guard says. The attendants buckle the leather loop tightly around his torso, clipping it into the other side. The chains are pulled taut by some mechanism in the walls. He can’t move very much, just enough to sway, change his seated position, but not stand or lie down. “This is the position we expect you to be in when we come for you. On your knees, in the center of the cell. Do you understand?” Loki nods. “You will hear this noise.” A siren, a short blast. “And you will get into position. Understood?” He nods again. “Good. We will return with food in the morning. The lights will go out in two hours.”    

And then Loki is left, immobile, under the harsh lights of the cell.    

He lets himself cry for a while. He’s so hopeless and alone and he knows he is going to lose his mind and he cannot stop it. When the tears slow, he starts to tentatively reach out with what limited seidr he can access. They cut off enough of it that he’s unable to _do_ anything, but he can _feel_ still.    

It takes him a while, but he finds what he’s looking for. The lightning hot, storm-blown, energy of his brother, hundreds of yards above his head. He wraps himself in it, feeling Thor’s fury, his frustration, his betrayal. He brushes his mind and feels confusion, awareness. They’re not strong enough to really communicate like this, but perhaps in time. Loki closes his eyes and anchors himself in his brother’s power, and soothes himself with it.    

Then the lights in his cell click off. He blinks his eyes open and sees nothing. It is completely and utterly black.    

That’s when he starts panicking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it. This is the furthest point forward in the linear narrative. 
> 
> In my defense, once again, _I_ at least feel bad? And there's 8k written already of the sequel so they won't be left like this forever. Does this make it better? No? Great. ;-) (Also in the sequel there is some narrative acknowledgment that this sort of solitary confinement is functionally torture. I don't really know where this chapter came from, it definitely got away from me, super fucked up. The level of research I did on prisons, especially death row, solitary, and execution procedures literally gave me nightmares one night. I've always had a very visceral horror reaction to execution, and I think part of my pull to write about it is a subconscious desire to explore it in the relatively safe realm of fiction?) 
> 
> I tried to think of how the Raft treated Wanda (straitjacket+collar) and tried to extrapolate the proportion of power:security measures that they probably felt like they would need. Especially since Loki broke out of the Hulk cell during the Avengers movie, they thought they would need some fairly extreme measures to hold him. (And that's enough to hold Thor too.) They're keeping him essentially immobile, bound to a very strict schedule and rules to keep him psychologically imprisoned as well, less likely to be able to even think about escape. At least they're not...also letting poisonous snake venom drop on his face? So they're one up on the mythology? And at least they aren't able to fully bind his magic, so he still can find some psychic comfort in Thor...but is letting their magics mingle like that really such a good idea? ;-) ;-) ;-) 
> 
> There is one more chapter ('31. Showdown') to bridge the gap between Tony and Thor's argument to here, and tomorrow for some mood whiplash, we're going back a bit to a period of recovery in House Avengers. 
> 
> Another late day, mostly because I'm at my parents' house and having a lazy Thanksgiving weekend, but also because I was working up the courage to post this one. Okay, I'm going to go hide from the audience-pitchfork-mob now. :-) Thanks for putting up with me, dear readers. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	26. Broken Ribs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Tony Stark. House Avengers. Warning: implied past torture. 
> 
> A quiet morning at House Avengers.

Thor wakes, breathless with the ache. He takes a moment to breathe as the pain in his chest slowly subsides. It’s taking a long time for the phantom pains of broken ribs to fade, so long that he thinks it might just be in his head.    

But he had hit the ground outside of the Avengers complex with some force. And he had already been severely weakened by three weeks of-   

He doesn’t like to think about it. His mind isn’t ready to process their time with Thanos.    

Loki is asleep next to him, half on his chest, his breath whistling in and out of his nose as he slumbers. Thor gently shifts out from under him and sits on the edge of the bed. He has pause for a minute to breathe through the pain when he’s upright, but it fades quickly and he’s able to stand and make his way to the kitchen with only a twinge.    

Tony is already there when he enters.    

“Hey, point break, how ya feeling?” He says, sounding tired.    

“Ah, I’ve been better.” Thor retrieves a glass for water from the cabinet.    

“You’ve been worse too. You looked like _shit_ when we scooped you up from the backyard, it’s a miracle you’re even _alive_ right now.”    

“Asgardians are not that easy to kill.” Thor fills his glass from the tap and takes a long sip. “Thanos was in over his head.”

Tony’s eyebrow twitches. “Right. Thanos.” Thor braces himself for further challenge, as all of their conversations seemed to be going lately, but Tony says nothing else. Thor sits opposite him at the table, wincing at the new movement sends a twinge through his ribcage. “Chest still hurting you? I can see if-”   

“I’m fine, Stark,” Thor says quickly, to head off his concern. “It’s only occasionally, and really, I have had worse than a few broken ribs.”    

“Have you?”    

“Stark, I am over a thousand years old. If I cannot handle a bit of a crash landing...though, I will admit, I am glad I will never have to face travel by Tesseract again.” 

“I guess that rules out that method for inter-galactic travel. Not that I had any successful plans. Nope, first Fury wouldn’t let me touch the stuff, then after the invasion you took off with it. I had some plans drawn up, but if it’s really lost this time…”    

“Especially since I believe Thanos will have destroyed the Tesseract by now to get to the gem inside.”

Tony makes a face and rises. “Want some coffee? I’ll make some fresh.” He rinses out the pot.    

“Speaking of the Stones, Stark, you said that the Vision is safe but-”    

“Vision’s fine, he’s off on a little trip right now. Usually stays here but I figured it might not be safe with…” He glances at the doorway and Thor can follow his line of thought. He says nothing. “Vision needs a break from me now and then, anyhow. I think he’s got a girlfriend, if the way he comes back all wide eyed and embarrassed is any clue. I would…should be pissed off but I guess at least one of us should be getting laid.”    

“What happened with Pepper?”    

“She was…she couldn’t really take the work anymore. You know how it is.”

Thor nods. “Indeed, Jane and I-” In the split second before he says the words, he remembers the lie he told to cover his journey to Norway. “Jane and I…things have been strained. Each time I see her, it seems like we’re growing more and more distant.” That’s at least close to the truth. That’s how it had been, until she finally said she’d had enough and told him not to come see her anymore. “This is a lonely profession, Stark. Defending Earth.”   

“You said it, point break. Not the easiest job for romance, especially with women who are too smart to put up with it.” The coffeemaker’s finished and Stark pours him a cup. “So, if the Tesseract is caput, and no more Asgard with the fancy realm hopping bridge…you’re stuck on Earth?”    

“Indefinitely, I’m afraid. Our best option is to hope that as many of our people survived Thanos’s assault as possible and are continuing their journey here. Eventually they will arrive and at least we’ll have a ship, though it will be slow moving. Loki possesses the power and knowledge of secret pathways through the Nine that he might be able to use, but,” He glances at the door. Loki has not emerged. “His powers are diminished for the time being. Using the Tesseract at the best of times is difficult and dangerous for even accomplished sorcerers, and…neither of us were at our best at the time. He says he feels as though it will be a while to reach full strength again, and I feel the same. Even around the security measures you’ve built into the walls.”

Tony looks instantly guilty. “Didn’t realize you knew about those…”

Thor gives him a half smile. “Nice try.”    

“It’s nothing personal. I put those in…”   

“When Wanda moved in, I’m assuming.” There’s a sudden tension in the air. It’s like the building energy for a storm. Thor knows they won’t fight yet, but it’s coming. Each time the brush closer to the topic of Wanda, Steve, or the Accords the tension gets thicker. They will have to talk about it sooner or later, Thor will have to confront Tony about what he learned in Norway, but for now he still feels too tired, his ribs ache too much, and he’s not ready. He shifts the conversation away. “We’ve also been discussing how to contact them, whoever survived. It’s going to be difficult, but we need to make sure they know we’re alive, and figure out how many survived Thanos.”

“Could Jane help?”   

“Possibly. I think Bruce could have done it, but I don’t know where he is now.”    

“You said your friend - that Heimdall guy, sent him here?”    

“That was the plan. He was supposed to come to Earth as a first warning. You’re sure…?” Tony has turned his back, busying himself with washing out his mug.  

“Yeah, haven’t seen him since he took off with the jet.” Again, Thor thinks there’s something more Tony’s not telling him. A subject for another day. Weary, Thor tries to steer Tony onto more neutral topics.    

“Tell me about this spider-person.”

Tony laughs. “Calls himself Spider _man_ , but he’s really just a kid, I designed him this suit-” Thor lets Tony talk about the tech, and his budding friendship with this Parker kid.    

He feels how quiet and still the Avengers facility feels at this early hour. How empty so many of the rooms had been when they had been full and bustling before. But that just reminds him of the coming argument and makes his ribs throb so he pushes it out of his mind and tries to think of nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is short and almost nothing happens in it. 
> 
> Yay. 
> 
> It was quiet at least. Tomorrow we've got another long-and-weird, so if you were hoping for more action, it's coming up! :-)
> 
> Also, officially, as of today, barring any small edits to the last few chapters, it is DONE. COMPLETELY. The document work count is just over 78k, and for fun I changed it into the 'academic standard' font/formatting (Times New Roman, 12 pt, double spaced): it is 295 pages. For comparison, my thesis was 60 pages. :D 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	27. 'I Can't Walk'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Loki & the Valkyrie. The Ark. Warnings: past attempted murder of children 
> 
> Thor's been having visions. It turns out Hela was not quite as out of their childhoods as they thought.

Thor waits as long as he can, hoping the visions go away. When three weeks go by, each night another odd dream, he cracks and seeks out Loki.

He finds his brother on his knees in the hydroponic gardens, using his magic to strengthen the chances the crops will survive. Thor waits patiently, watching as Loki’s magic spreads.    

“If you’re not here to summon a storm to save me from watering,” Loki says eventually. “You should leave me alone.”    

“Give me one good reason why.”    

“Because you’re obviously here to bother me about something, or else scold me for something, and I’m not in the mood for either.”   

“Have you done something that I should scold you for?”

Loki opens his eyes with a sigh. “Not that I can recall at the moment. So? Why _are_ you here?”   

“I have something to ask you.” Thor offers a hand and pulls him up.    

“Oh?”    

“I heard what you did to the Valkyrie.”

Loki steps back, out of his grip. “So you _are_ here to scold me.”    

“No.” Loki sits on a bench. “I’m here to ask you to do that to me.”    

“ _What?_ ”    

“In a more controlled manner, of course. I know you can do it, enter people’s thoughts and memories. Show them visions of the past.”    

“What would I be showing you?” Loki asks warily.

Thor runs a hand over his cropped hair. “I’ve been having these dreams. They feel so real. It’s…we’re back on Asgard. I just get these flashes, of things that I remember happening. But Hela is there.” Loki’s brow furrows. “Do you remember the time I nearly drowned?”    

“When we were climbing trees?”    

“Yes. Tell me how you remember it.”

Loki thinks for a moment. “You’d climbed higher than me, faster. I was annoyed and trying to catch up when there was a crack and the branch gave way and you fell into the lake below. It was an accident.”    

“That’s how I remembered it too. But then…I dreamed of that day. And instead of the branch breaking, I dreamed that I turned and I saw her face. Hela. And she grabbed me and pushed.”

Loki stands, pacing with his hands twisting together. “How do you know it wasn’t just a dream? A nightmare?”    

“I feels different. Loki, you know I can tell the difference.”    

“You haven’t always,” Loki scoffs. “What then, brother? Do you think Hela _escaped?_ ”   

“Yes. I think she escaped her prison over the years, or the walls were weakened. All the other dreams are the same. Times when misfortune or accident befell one or both of us, and she’s there. That cave-in that separated us from the Warrior’s Three? When you ‘fainted’ and fell down the tower steps? The mysterious assassin who tried to kill us in our beds when I was ten, the wolf that clawed your back…it goes on and on, every night I see these memories.”   

“All her? Trying to kill us?”   

“It was the first thing she tried to do when she escaped the last time.”   

“But we didn’t have any knowledge-”   

“I think Father altered our memories, to keep us in the dark. Keep her a blank spot in our heads.”    

“Thor, this is madness-”   

“Do you not believe he would do such a thing? Or that she would not be capable of it?”    

“And you want me to go into your head, into the past, and find the truth?”    

“I need to know. She was our sister-”    

“Your sister,” Loki interrupts, holding up a finger. Thor shoots him a scathing look. “What? If I was forced to disavow my relationship to Frigga, at least I can rejoice in rejecting the bonds to Hela, especially if she has been trying to murder me my whole life.”

Thor stops him in his pacing tracks, grabbing his shoulders. “Reject the bonds to Hela all you wish, Loki. But don’t do that to Mother. You know it is her magic that you possess. Her magic _and_ her love and her trust. And you can use it to help me find the truth of what happened to our family.” Loki still hesitates, glances away. “What is it? Do you fear the truth?”   

“I fear Hela.”

Thor’s hands tighten on his shoulders. “She is dead.”   

“She is the goddess of death. She likely reigns now in Hel. If we disturb her, if what you’re saying is true and she has been able to escape before…” 

“If death is her prison now, it will be stronger than the one Father constructed for her. Please, Loki. I need to know.”    

“Okay. I’ll do it. But what you’re asking is more complicated than what I did to the Valkyrie. I need time and materials.”   

“We reach the market in another week’s time.”    

“That should be sufficient. I’ll rest and at the market purchase what I need and when we leave, we’ll do it. We’ll find the truth.” Loki pulls away. He touches one of the vines. “We should do it here. The plants can be our anchor.”    

“Thank you, brother. Truly.”  
   

Seven nights, another seven nights of dreams. In each repetition of the dreams, Hela’s face is clearer.    

In a meeting to discuss the materials they'll need, the day before they land, Thor’s head suddenly throbs in pain. To cries of his name, he presses a hand to the side of his skull and shuts his eye.    

When he opens it, he is back on Asgard. It is night, and the room is lit by moonlight. It’s his childhood bedroom, the one he and Loki had shared before they were old enough to each have their own. Their small forms, covered in blankets, breathing even and peaceful in sleep. In his memories, the assassin is a black shape. He had assumed he was too young to clearly remember. When he had first dreamed this, the assassin had still been a shadow, unmasked as Hela only at the end.    

This time, he sees his sister clearly. She stands in the center of the room, dressed in black rags, her hair hanging over her face. She smiles and a long black blade appears in her hand. She goes to his bed first, and raises the blade high above her head. She meets Thor’s eyes and brings down the blade with an unearthly shriek.

He’s back on the Ark. The Valkyrie grips his shoulders, shaking him. Heimdall’s hands are on his back.   

“Thor! _Thor!_ ”

He blinks. “Sorry, sorry! I’m back.”    

“What the _fuck?_ ”    

“It’s nothing.” He rubs his eye and stands, out of their grips. “Really, I’m fine.” Heimdall looks very knowing, the Valkyrie just confused and horrified. “It’s fine, I’m handling it.”   

Bruce and Loki had hung back. Thor makes eye contact with his brother, who keeps his expression schooled. But there is fear in his eyes.  
   

“Do you want me to go with you?” Thor asks. “I could leave the negotiations up to the Valkyrie.”

“No, I should go alone.” Loki wraps his cloak tighter around himself and shivers. This planet is damp and cold, though Thor suspects Loki shivers with unease rather than cold.    

“Be back before dark.” He claps his shoulder and watches as he disappears into the market crowd.    

It’s a hard two days, loading new supplies onto the ship. Thor is too tired at night to dream, or perhaps it’s the anticipation of finally solving this mystery that stops the visions.    

They depart from that cold planet and their first night in space, Loki presses close to him at dinner. “Tonight. After we finish the meal, I’ll gather the supplies. Meet me in the gardens. I’ve already told the caretakers I’ll be taking their shift tonight.”    

“Is there anything else I should do to prepare?”    

“Eat well. You’ll need your strength.”  
   

The gardens are softly lit when Thor arrives.    

“I know we’re supposed to turn off the lights,” Loki says with a hesitant smile. “To trick the plants into thinking they’re in nature. But I could not bear the thought of facing Hela in the dark.” Thor agrees. “Are you sure about this?”   

“You saw what happened the other day. These visions are coming when I’m awake now. There is something I need to see.”

Loki nods. “Okay. We’ll kneel here.” He has constructed a circle of alternating candles and jars of water. Each of the jars has something floating in it. Thor tries not to look too closely. He sees bone and plant, and decides to leave well enough alone. The circle is large enough for both of them to kneel facing each other. In the center, there is a basin, empty. Loki fills it with sweet-smelling water from a jug. He takes out a knife.    

“What-”   

“I need blood. Your blood especially, since I share none with either you or Hela.” Thor hesitates. Loki rolls his eyes. “If you’re nervous about a little blood, I’ll go first.” He draws the blade across his palm without even a wince. The blood runs over his fingers and drips into the basin. “Now you. Same hand.” He offers Thor the blade, handle first. Thor cuts his left palm, and lets it drip into the water. Their bloods mingle in the basin. “This will help keep us together in the vision. We should not be separated.” Loki holds out his hand and Thor clasps it, the wound stinging as it’s pressed to Loki’s. “Don’t let go.” His voice is insistent.    

“I won’t.”    

“Are you ready?” Thor nods. “Close your eyes.” He does so and he feels Loki’s cold magic sweep over him.    

He thinks they might collapse. He feels grass on his face and Loki’s hand in his and then they’re falling through the darkness.   

The visions come quickly now as they fall.    

He sees the night in the cave, Hela’s snarling face bringing down stones over their heads. They press together, gasping in the claustrophobic closeness of the little bubble of air allowed them, as they wait for the Warriors Three to get them out.    

He sees a teenage Loki, bounding uncaringly up the tower stairs above the library. He reaches the top and gasps as Hela steps from the shadows and grabs his throat. She smiles as she pushes him backwards over the stairs until he’s arched past the point of no return and then lets go, watching as he tumbles down.    

The lake, Hela appearing suddenly in the tree as he climbed higher, grasping his arms and casting him into the water below.    

Loki walking in the woods, turning at the sound of a snapped branch. Hela, there with a knife, slashing it across his back.    

The assassin, Hela raising the blade over their beds.    

Thor is six now, Loki a toddler and they’re playing on a blanket by the fire. Hela stands in the shadows and with a twist of her hand a stream of fire reaches out and catches the corner of their blanket.  
   

They finally land, hard. Loki collapses next to him, falling to his knees.  

“You were right,” He cries. “You were right, _Norns_.” He covers his face with his hand, the other shaking uncontrollably in Thor’s. “She’s been trying to kill us since we were children.”    

“Where are we? Why have we stopped?”    

“This is whatever your visions want you to see. Whatever reason they’ve been coming to you in the dreams, this is what you seek.”

Thor feels a pull on him, an urge to move from the hall they’re in, towards the nursery. He tugs on Loki’s hand. “Come on. This way. Loki, come on.”

Loki doesn’t rise. “I can’t walk.”    

“What?”    

“I can’t get up. I can’t feel my legs.”

Thor feels a sharp spike of fear. “Is that…what could…”    

“I wouldn’t worry too much. It may just be because I have to concentrate on keeping us in the vision. You’ll have to face this alone.”

Thor tightens his grip on Loki’s hand. “I thought you said not to separate, to keep holding hands.”   

“In the physical realm, back in our bodies on the Ark. As long as we’re touching on the Ark, we won’t be in danger of being split apart into different visions. It’s not ideal, but I cannot move, and you must. Leave me here, its okay.”    

“You’re sure?”

Loki nods. “Go. Whatever you’re meant to see, you have to follow it. It’s clear I’m not meant to go any farther with you.”

Thor lets go of Loki’s hand. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”    

“Good luck, brother.”    

He walks into the nursery.   

There’s a bed and a crib. He’s perhaps three or four, curled on his side with his thumb in his mouth. Loki is a baby, awake and cooing in his crib. Thor goes over to him. His green eyes blink up at Thor and he can almost believe the baby sees his spectral self.    

“Hello, Loki,” He says quietly. The baby giggles, putting his fist in his mouth.    

The door to the nursery opens and Hela enters. She looks right through him as she approaches the crib. She’s dressed in her black armor, her black and green cape covering her shoulders, none of it yet torn as it had been when they faced her in Norway. Her hair is long and loose. She leans over the crib.    

“Hello, little monster. You’re going to help me with something very important tonight.” Loki looks up at her and his expression crumples and he starts to cry.    

“Hela?” Thor glances at his younger self, now sitting up in bed and rubbing his eyes.    

“Go back to sleep, Thor. I’ll take care of the baby.” Loki’s really wailing now, arching away from Hela’s hands. The sound of his little sobs stirs a deep protective instinct inside Thor. He longs to snatch Loki from the crib and cradle him to his chest, keeping him away from Hela. But he’s nothing but a ghost here.    

“Where’s Mama?” The real version of himself asks.    

“Your mother needs her rest. She asked me to take care of you two for a while. Now go back to sleep.” She picks up the baby, balancing him on her hip. She bounces him a little, but Loki’s cries do not cease. “I’m just going to take care of little baby Loki, and I’ll be back for you. You trust your big sister, don’t you? Lie down and go back to sleep.” He obeys, and Hela leaves with the baby.    

Thor follows her, increasingly apprehensive about what she was going to do with Loki. She starts towards the vaults. Just before she starts to descend the stairs, a voice rings out.    

“Hela, stop!” With a pang, Thor recognizes the voice of his mother. Frigga is young, hair piled in braids atop her head. She is dressed in armor, holding a sword. “Give me the baby.”    

“Oh dearest stepmother,” she says. “No.”    

“Hela, stop this.” Loki wails and reaches for Frigga. He writhes in Hela’s grip, trying to get to his mother, but Hela holds him too tightly.    

“You stop this,” Hela snarls. “The throne is mine.”    

“If you give me the baby-”    

“It’s not a baby, it’s a monster. Father is casting me off and replacing me with this _thing_.”   

“Your father is not casting you off, Hela. He is merely-”   

“What? _Stopping_ me? We’ve been ruling together for five hundred years, slaughtering our way across the galaxy and he just decides to stop at Nine? He meets you and has his little peace-loving wife, and his little golden son, and the animal he brought home from the war. No. I will not stop at Nine.”

Frigga remains unnervingly calm, keeping her eyes focused on Hela’s face. Just once Thor sees her glance at the baby, crying and reaching out for her, but then her jaw tightens and she looks Hela straight in the eye. “What became of the Valkyries, Hela? They set out to escort you home.”   

“Escort me back to my prison you mean? They’re dead. All of them. Do you want to hear what I’m going to do to them? I’m going to go to the altar in the vaults, and sacrifice the little monster and raise them and I will have my army of the dead. But first I guess I have to kill you.” She lets go of Loki and lunges, the black blade coming to her hand in an instant. Frigga is torn between catching the baby and blocking the blow. Hela’s sword comes soaring at her-   

“No!” Thor shouts. Frigga is forced to parry, defending herself from being impaled, and has to let Loki hit the stone floor hard. Loki shrieks, high and piercing, and Thor’s heart breaks. He crouches by the wailing infant, reaching out with ghostly hands as the two women struggle.    

Finally, Frigga overpowers Hela for just long enough to thrust her against a wall, using magic to collapse the stone. She sheathes her sword and rushes to the baby, grabbing him to her chest.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry baby, shhhh, it’s okay.” She keeps him pressed to her, beginning to cry herself. “It’s okay, I’m so sorry.” Thor has never heard a baby cry so hard in his life, and never heard his mother so frightened. Her hand glows, cupping Loki’s small head. “Okay, you’re alright, dear one.” Then she runs, Thor trailing, back to the nursery. She bursts in, startling the younger version of himself awake.    

“Mama!” He cries in surprise as Frigga scoops him up. “Mama, what’s wrong?”    

“It’s okay, dear one, come with me.”    

“Mama, what’s wrong with Loki? Mama?”    

“Hush. I don’t have much time.” She carries them up the library tower to the small room at the top, used as a guest room for visiting students. It is a simple scholar’s cell, with a small bed and a basin for water. She sets Thor down first, then puts Loki in his lap. He wraps his small arms very carefully around the baby as Loki wails. “Thor, I’m going to lock you both in here, okay? I’m going to send guards to watch over the entrance to the tower stairs. Do not open the door for anyone, _anyone_ , until I return. Especially your sister.”    

“‘Specially Hela?”    

“Yes. It is incredibly important that she not get either of you. You won’t understand until you’re older. But she’s been very, very mean. She’s been hurting you and your brother, and if she gets her hands on you, she’s going to hurt you both very badly.”    

“Did she hurt Loki? Is that why he’s crying?”

Frigga’s breath hitches. “Yes, she hurt him, but he’s okay now, just scared. Can you be very brave for both of you, now? Can you be brave and protect your baby brother?” Thor’s lip quivers but he nods firmly, holding the baby closer. Loki grasps at his clothing with his little baby fingers. “My sweet boys.” She kisses their heads. “I will return as soon as I can.” She slams the door shut and locks it, sealing off the room with magic.    

Loki keeps crying.    

“It’s okay, Loki,” Four-year-old Thor says. “Please stop crying.”    

“I don’t remember any of this,” The older Thor says. “Nothing. I didn’t remember Hela at all but she…” His younger self pats the baby on the back and Loki lets out a piercing shriek of pain. He freezes, laying Loki down on the mattress. Carefully, he unbuttons his pajamas and peels them back from his tiny form, rolling Loki onto his stomach.    

The child’s eyes widen in horror as he sees the mottled black and blue bruising all over the baby’s back from where he hit the floor. “Loki-” He gasps. Thor longs to reach out for them, for both of them, but before he can, the floor drops out from underneath him and he’s falling through the darkness again.    

“Loki!” He shouts, but he is alone this time.  
   

He sees it all again. Hela overpowered by Odin and imprisoned in a pocket dimension. Her slipping through, appearing as a nightmare throughout their childhoods, a ghost haunting them. A curse.    

They’re on the cliff in Norway and she is advancing.    

They’re on the bifrost and he sees Loki knocked out before he feels a sharp pain and is falling further.    

His eye aches.    

He sees things that are not real, that are nothing more than Hela’s dark fantasies. Sees her gutting the baby, bathing in his blood. Sees all her attempts succeed, sees them consumed by flames on their blanket, spitted by black blades in their beds, Loki bleeding out from long wounds carved in his back, his own lifeless corpse floating in the water, Loki at the bottom of the stairs, neck at an impossible angle, them gasping for their last breaths while buried alive in the cave in. He sees them bruised and beaten, their blood splattered across the Norwegian grass. Their corpses, bound hand and foot, hanged and swinging above the entrance to Hela’s throne room, guarded by the reanimated dead-   

“Stop,” Thor finally shouts, clapping his hands over his head. “Stop!”  
   

And then he wakes up, still on his side in the garden, grass tickling his cheek. He hears several sounds, but it takes a moment to process any of it. 

The first sensation to break the fog is the feeling of Loki’s hand in his, squeezing so tight his bones ache.    

The second is the sound of Loki crying.    

He’s sobbing harder than Thor has ever heard him cry before, except for in the vision. Thor’s throat and mouth are very dry and no words come out when he tries to comfort him.    

The third thing, is a loud, furious, stream of curses.    

“ _Fucking_ magic, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Thor! Listen to me, you have to break the circle, I can’t help you if you don’t break the circle.” The Valkyrie. She sounds like she’s pounding her hand on something hard. The circle? The circle of candles and water, of course. Thor manages to kick out and knock over one of the candles. The feeling of enclosure breaks and cool air flows over them. The Valkyrie is suddenly crouching next to Loki.    

“No!” Thor cries, in a sudden panic by the sight of her reaching out to touch him. The sudden fear obliterates reason. He pulls Loki into his chest. “No, don’t touch him!” Thor’s still half in the vision, doesn’t know where he is. The Valkyrie backs off, holding her hands up in surrender. “I’m not supposed to let anyone…let anyone in…”

“Thor, I don’t know what magics you two were playing at, but I need you to _snap the fuck out of it._ ”    

“Stay away from us, don’t touch us,” He growls. He clutches Loki protectively as his younger brother sobs. “Don’t touch us.”    

“Okay, okay, fine, I won’t.” The Valkyrie waits patiently, as reason slowly returns to him.    

He blinks. “Oh. _Oh_.”    

“Majesty?”    

“ _Val?_ ” She relaxes, letting out a big breath of air.    

“Fuck. What the hell were you two doing? I went looking for you when you never came to bed. I found you here, completely catatonic, dead to the world, and I couldn’t cross the circle. And then Loki just started _crying_ and couldn’t hear me and you didn’t even blink.” She’s trembling a little bit. “What the _fuck_.”    

“I had to see.”   

“See what?”    

“I’ll explain…I’ll explain later.” Thor carefully sits up, dragging Loki, still senseless and sobbing, with him. He pulls them into an echo of the position they’d been in in the small scholar’s cell on Asgard, Loki in his lap, grasping desperately at his shirt. “It’s okay,” Thor says, rubbing his back. “It’s okay, we’re back. I’m so sorry I made you do this, I’m so sorry.”    

It takes a while, but Loki’s rough sobs slow and he calms, though his eyes remain unfocused and he doesn’t respond when questioned.    

“Help me get him up,” Thor asks the Valkyrie. Together they guide him to a bench. Thor sits beside him, with a hand on his back.    

“I’ll get you some water,” The Valkyrie says, and leaves them. After a minute or so, Loki’s eyes focus and he blinks rapidly. He touches his cheek, looking surprised at the wetness on his fingertips.   

“Loki?”    

“Hm?”    

“Are you back?”    

“Yes.” He wipes away the tear tracks on his cheeks. The Valkyrie returns with water, forcing them to drink.    

“Are you two going to explain to me what the fuck you were doing?” She asks. Loki shudders.    

“I’m so sorry, brother, if I had known…I’m so sorry. Is this because we separated in the vision?”

Loki shakes his head. “It was my fault. When we reached the last vision and I couldn’t walk, I knew it was because I wasn’t strong enough to keep us both there. I should have just stayed in the hallway and waited for you to find what you were looking for. But I was curious too. I couldn’t move, but I could anchor myself to something. Someone, rather.”  

“So you anchored yourself…to yourself, didn’t you?” Loki nods. “You did see me, in the crib.” He nods again.    

“You were watching. I was…experiencing.”    

“ _Norns_.”    

“Experiencing what? Highnesses, you’ve got to give me something here,” The Valkyrie implores. “ _What_ were you doing?”    

“And you…you knew I was old enough to remember,” Thor says. “Heimdall would have too…”   

“Thor, I need you to focus, remember what?”    

“Remember Hela. I was…I was old enough to remember her and I didn’t because Odin just _took_ her from our heads.”

She rocks back on her heels with a sigh. “Odin altered the memories of everyone who stayed on Asgard. I thought it was thorough enough that you wouldn’t remember, but I guess it’s wearing off, or you’re getting too powerful. So you remembered something about Hela, and you had Loki dive back into the past and conjure a vision for you?”

Thor nods. “Of the night she was imprisoned. After she came back from slaughtering the Valkyries. I wanted to know.” She looks away.    

“She tried to kill me, apparently,” Loki says after he’s drained the glass of water she brought him. “She was going to use me as a blood sacrifice to resurrect the Valkyries under her thrall. Then she was going to kill mother and Thor and Odin and seize the throne for herself.” Loki winces, placing a hand on his back. Thor pulls up his shirt. His back is purple and mottled with bruises, the phantom injuries of his infancy. “And when that failed, when mother stopped her, she spent the rest of her time in prison reaching out and trying to kill us. And Odin erased her, every time.” Thor takes a shaky breath and presses his nose to the side of Loki’s head to hide the look on his face.   

“That bastard, that sounds like him.” The Valkyrie puts her hands on their shoulders. “Hela is dead. You killed her. You survived everything she threw at you and you survived all of Odin’s lies, and you’re safe. Now. I’m going to go drink an entire bottle of whatever the strongest thing is that we currently have on this, because that’s how _I_ respond to talking about or even _thinking_ about Hela. You’re welcome to join me.”    

They take her up on her invitation and get wildly intoxicated. Much later, Loki is laying on the couch next to Thor, head pillowed in his arms with his eyes closed. His back still aches too much to put pressure on it, so he lays on his stomach. The Valkyrie’s passed out in the corner.   

“Thor?” Thor pets back the hair from his forehead. “Next time you have one of your visions, please leave me out of it,” He murmurs. “The worst damned seer in all the Nine, I swear…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thor is truly the worst seer. Loki is so done. Hela was a terrible older sister. (Valkyrie's actually a pretty decent older sister. But also so done.) 
> 
> I think everyone has their own version of the timeline for Hela's defeat and imprisonment, own headcanons for whether or not she was Frigga's daughter (though Thor, I believe, calls her half-sister in Infinity War?), whether she was around for Frigga's marriage to Odin, Thor's birth etc. My own personal timeline that I usually work off of was that she _was_ around for Thor's early, early childhood, not really a huge fan of this new family thing but kind of tolerating it. The end of the war with Jotunheim and Odin picking up a free baby from the battlefield was the straw that broke the camel's back. Like, 'seriously old man, you're adopting a Jotun, have you gone mad' and that's the impetus for her to be like 'okay, you're done, my turn and I'm going to do this right.' 
> 
> I really wish there was more Hela - Loki interaction. I just think it's fascinating, they look so much alike despite not being related, Loki's clearly very afraid of her, immediately, they could clash in so many fun and awful ways. And yet they're also very similar and could complement each other in a lot of ways. Ah. 
> 
> This was the last long-and-weird, sadly! Can't believe we're down to the last few days. To round out the month we've got a long-awaited conclusion, an AU of the AU, gratuitous fluff, and the last plot-y chapter. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	28. Severe Illness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Revengers. The Ark. Warnings: hospitals, medical procedures. 
> 
> (Follow up to 8. Fever.) Loki starts coughing up blood. They might need a little help with this one.

   

When Thor sees the blood streaking the sheets, he panics. He scoops Loki into his arms as he keeps coughing wetly, the blood blooming on his lips. He feels so hot through the fabric of their clothes. He carries him through the halls of the ship to the makeshift infirmary they had painstakingly set up. It is early and he meets no one in the halls. The solitude in the halls makes him feel all the more afraid. It’s eerie, to be carrying Loki through the halls, the only sounds being the creaking of the ship and Loki’s increasingly weak coughs.    

Thor bursts into the infirmary, startling the apprentice healer who was drinking tea in the quiet of the morning.    

“You have to help him,” Thor cries.

She starts to tremble. “Um, lay him there…I’ll just fetch the lady Gudrun, she’ll know what to do,” She says frantically, rushing from the room. Thor lays Loki on one of the cots.

Loki grabs his arm. “Basin-” Thor rushes for it, getting it to Loki in time for him to retch into it, coughing up a good deal of phlegm and blood. He breathlessly falls back.    

“She’s going to get Gudrun,” Thor says. His voice shakes. “It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay.”

Loki grabs his hand and holds it to his chest. “It is,” He croaks. His eyes are glassy but they manage to focus. “It’s okay, stop looking at me like that.” Thor’s face crumples. He hides it by kissing Loki’s forehead firmly, then burying his face in his hair. They stay like that until the apprentice returns, trailed by the older healer. Gudrun tries to shoo Thor away but he refuses to relinquish Loki’s hand.    

“Young man, you should have come to me earlier.” She takes his temperature and listens to his lungs, then putters about finding and combining drugs. “This should make him feel a little bit more comfortable. We have not heard of anyone else falling ill,” She says softly. “But I will put out a notification. It’s possible you picked something up on the last off-planet visit.” Loki seems to be breathing a little easier as the medication takes hold. “Can you tell me your symptoms, your highness?” Loki explains how he had first felt fatigued, then began to cough.

Gudrun frowns when she hears how high the fever had gotten. “Has there been any delirium?”    

“No,” Loki says at the same time Thor says, “Yes.” Loki glances up at his brother, frowning.

Thor clears his throat and squeezes his hand. “Last night, when we were going to bed. You thought…you asked for mother. You seemed to think it was decades ago.”    

“…oh.”    

“That’s not that bad,” Gudrun says softly. She quietly continues her examination, feeling his neck, taking his pulse. “I’ll need you to remove your shirt, your highness.” Loki hesitates, looking reluctant.    

“Must I?” He glances at Thor. It’s absurd, that he suddenly is reluctant to bare his chest in front of Thor. They’d seen in each in various states of undress over the last thousand years, they’d been sleeping in the same bed for months.    

But something clearly is making Loki uncomfortable about this.    

“I’m sorry, your highness, but I do need you to remove your shirt.” Loki won’t look at him as he unbuttons his tunic and draws it aside. There’s a moment of dead silence when it comes off.    

In the center of his chest, over his sternum, is a gnarled and discolored scar, roughly the size and shape of the Kursed’s blade.    

Thor’s mouth goes dry as his mind flies four years in the past, watching Loki pierced by the massive blade, falling back with his hands grasping at his chest. Holding him in his arms as he apologizes, as his body grows limp and cold. Thor can’t breathe.    

“I’m sorry, brother,” Loki says. “That you had to find out this way.”    

“So, it was real.”    

“Yes.” Thor grasps his shoulder and wavers slightly. He can’t process this.    

“This wound…I have not seen a wound like this in an age. How did you come by it?” Loki won’t look at either of them as he summarizes he and Thor’s misadventures on Svartalfheim. There’s a buzzing in Thor’s ears. Gudrun places her hands on either side of the scar, feeding her magic through the grotesque flesh. “Hm, I think I recall some of the young ones discussing a similar plot from some theatrical performance,” She gives him a half smile to show she is joking. Loki returns it.

Thor doesn’t find any of this funny. “I thought you’d faked it…when I saw the play, when I confronted you, you said-”    

“I said nothing. neither to confirm or deny, you drew your own conclusions.”    

“Loki, do not lie and imply that you didn’t want me to believe you had faked it.” Thor scrubs a hand through his hair. “What…Loki, you _stopped breathing_. I swear, your heart…I would not have left you if I had thought…you know that, right?” Thor is on the verge of tears; they are becoming more and more difficult to hold in.    

“Your majesty, there will be a time to discuss this,” Gudrun says. “But first, we need to talk about what this means for this illness.” She fixes her eyes on Loki. “The scar has healed poorly. It is tying up pieces of your magic. The virus, whatever you picked up, is eating through your seidr, making the illness far worse than it would normally be. I believe it may be slowly opening up the wound, which would explain the blood. Does it hurt?”

Loki hesitates, then nods. “Since I fell ill, there has been pressure, constantly. And before that, on occasion…it would wake me up at night, aching.” Thor hadn’t noticed. Loki had been suffering, a wound he received saving his life, and he had not noticed. Hadn’t hesitated to believe that Loki had faked the whole thing the moment he learned he was alive.    

“Does it hurt when I press like this?” Loki winces. “I suppose that is my answer.”    

“What do we do?” Thor says, voice low.    

“This is beyond my skill. If we were on Asgard, I would advise you to go to Eir. Now…we need to make for a port with healing facilities. We have a little time. I believe you’re not in any mortal danger, highness. But this will get worse. If it is not this illness, it could be the next one, or the next. Until healers can untangle your seidr from the knot of the wound, you will be susceptible to illness. Eventually, you will be unable to use your magic. Eventually, it will kill you.”

Thor’s hand forms a fist and he squeezes. “I won’t let that happen. Where is the best place to go?”    

“I will provide a list. The Watcher should be able to locate the closest and safest.” Gudrun lets Loki go. “You may dress, highness. For now, we will make you comfortable and keep the fever down. That’s the best we can do.”    

Thor has to step out for a minute. He buries his face in his hands and tries to think of nothing.  
   

Gudrun creates a cocktail of medicines with their limited supply that ease the cough and keep the fever in check. They also have a mild sedative effect, leaving Loki heavily relaxed, barely able to lift his head from the pillow.    

“She and Heimdall consulted,” Thor says. “We’ll be at something called the Citadel in three days time.”    

“And what are they going to do there?” Loki’s words come out slurred.

Thor takes his hand. “They’ll do their best to untangle the magics that the Kursed’s blade twisted in your chest. They may also know this illness, be able to help you recover quicker.”  

“Hm,” Loki says. “I suppose that’s just another thing we took for granted on Asgard. Eir. We never had to travel for these sorts of things.”    

“Loki, we have to talk about this.”    

“About what?” He asks, eyes drifting closed.    

“When did you decide to trick me? The truth, this time.”

Loki sighs, opening his eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was alive,” Loki says. “It wasn’t yet a lie when last you held me on Svartalfheim. I truly thought I was dying. I felt the cold and the darkness and then the pain was bleeding away and I thought, this, this isn’t that bad. Certainly better than the first time, in the Void. I drifted for a while, but then I felt the pain creeping in again. I awoke laying in the sands and I was cold and alone. And my chest hurt so badly.”

Thor twitches. “I swear to you, if I had even an inkling of hope that you were still alive,” Thor says. “I would never have left you there.”    

“Yes, you would have brought me back to Asgard to be healed. And then the cell, right?” Thor says nothing but Loki nods. “I was to be locked away, to live out the rest of my sentence, or perhaps punished worse because I had escaped. You should have known from the second you took me from my cell that I wasn’t going back there. Yes, I had no intention of returning to Asgard a prisoner. I meant it to be by means of my death, when I saw that was the only way to defeat the monster. But then I survived. I wasn’t about to go running after you so you could drag me back like a good dog to my kennel.   

“I managed to heal myself, though poorly, as we’re now discovering, and I slipped back through the path to Asgard. I confronted Odin. We argued. I think I was a bit delirious, but I remember thinking…how _funny_ it would be to put him in one of the places the Midgardians squirrel away their elderly. I had just enough power and he was so old. I wrapped him in as many confusion and binding spells as I could and brought him to New York. Made up a story about…let’s see if I remember it…about being an only child, living far away, and I just can’t take care of poor old dad, you see? Went back to Asgard wearing his face. Banished Heimdall so I wouldn’t be found out. Ruled tediously. I started doing more and more… _ridiculous_ things. Because I thought he would come back. I thought you would come back. So I built a statue and fantasized about the fight we would have when you or Father returned and saw it. But nothing. I wrote everything into the play, still nothing. I just kept thinking _someone_ would come back and no one ever did.”    

“It sounds like…it sounds like you wanted to be caught. That you wanted to be punished. Loki, what-”    

“I didn’t want to be punished, I wanted to be _seen_. Anyway.” Loki wipes a tear of his cheek. “You did come back, eventually. It didn’t quite happen the way I wanted. But. Well. You were there for that part.”

Thor is silent for a while. “I wish I could say you were wrong,” he finally says. “About me returning you to your cell. But I can’t. I would not have thought to do anything different than return you to the prison when we were done. But…it still pains me greatly to imagine you waking alone, in pain.” He wraps Loki’s hand in both of his. “And even…even being alone for so long under the glamour on Asgard. We can talk about Father later, after this is over. But just know: I won’t leave you this time. They’re going to have to put you to sleep to heal the scar, or so says Gudrun.” Loki’s expression remains carefully schooled, but Thor is good enough now at reading his brother to see the anxiety through the stoicism. “I swear, you will not wake alone. You will not be alone for a moment, okay? I will be there.” Loki nods.  
   

Bruce lets all the air out of his lungs in a long whoosh.    

“Magic,” He says, sounding faint. “Magic is…doing _what_ exactly?” He sounds faint and Thor knows he was right to seek out the Asgardian healer first. Bruce still looks a bit wan as Thor explains what he understood of Gudrun’s diagnosis, but agrees to look at scans. He images Loki’s chest and projects the pictures onto the wall.  

“Jesus, yeah, it’s like…it’s like pneumonia, or a really _aggressive_ tumor, but I wouldn’t even know where to start pulling it apart. You’re sure it’s magic?”    

“It was a wound, poorly healed by use of magic,” Thor replies. “That is the obvious conclusion. Though I suppose we’ll find out if we’re wrong and…take things from there.”  
   

There’s a brief argument about whether or not Thor and Loki should both travel to this unknown planet together, especially when one of them was so severely weakened. It apparently as a bit of a reputation, but the hospital itself is in a relatively safe region. In the end the look on Thor’s face silences the dissenters and the Valkyrie agrees to go with them and the argument ends. Gudrun contacts the administrators and explains their situation. They agree to help, for a minimal cost.    

Thor has to carry Loki off the ship, wrapped in a cloak. It takes two days to reach the Citadel, and Loki grows weaker by the moment. The fever was still fighting the basic medications they had on board the ship and he had slipped back into a half-conscious, restless state. Even in his most lucid moments were now confused and unfocused. His magic is fading, down to the color in his eyes dulling. Thor stays by his side as much as he can.   

He moans, shifting in Thor’s arms, as they stand waiting for the doors to the Citadel to open. The Valkyrie turns and the expression on her face softens. She lays a hand on Loki’s arm, rubbing the cloak softly.    

“I’ve never much liked hospitals,” She says after a moment.    

“Me neither.” Thor hitches Loki’s body up, holding him more securely in his arms.    

“He’ll be alright, majesty,” Valkyrie says. “If he’s survived this much, there’s no way he’s going to be taken down by a stupid fever and some twisted magics.” Thor nods. He smiles weakly. She gives Loki’s arm a last soft pat before letting go.    

The elevator doors open and they are met with four physicians, dressed in sky blue, with a stretcher. Thor’s heartbeat speeds up at the thought of putting Loki down. But the Citadel staff are patient and kind, their hands gentle as they help Thor lay Loki down. Loki twists when he’s released.    

“Cold,” He mumbles. He reaches for Thor and grasps his arm.    

“I’m here, it’s alright. Can I…?” He asks one of the doctors.    

“Of course, your majesty,” She responds. “We don’t believe in separating patients from their support systems here. You’re welcome to stay with him, stay touching him, whatever you believe will keep him comfortable.”    

“Thank you,” He says earnestly. The room is small, but clean. A window provides fresh, cool air, blissful after weeks shut away on the ship. The doctors help Loki out of his shirt and place a needle in the back of his hand, taping it in place. They draw blood and take it away for testing. For now, they put him on a general fever reducer and painkiller. It works quickly, and soon Loki is blinking his bleary eyes open.    

“Thor?”    

“I’m here.”

Loki shifts in the bed, leaning towards him. “Are they going to do it? Do _something?_ ”    

“Soon, they’re waiting for some tests.”    

“Ah.” Loki shifts again, wincing.    

“Are you still in pain?”    

“A bit. I wish they would just get it over with.”

Thor takes his hand. “It will be over soon. It will be alright soon.”    

“Soon is not now,” Loki mutters bitterly.        

They have to wait about half a day, but the surgeons come for him. Thor sits by his head, keeping a hand rested on his hair. Loki tries to hide his fear as they lie him flat and remove his shirt.    

The scar looks even worse than before, black and gnarled. Threads of it spread over the skin of his chest.    

“It will be alright, your highness,” One of them says. “You’ll sleep through the whole thing.” Loki twitches.    

“I’m here,” Thor murmurs. They slide two needles into the crook of his arm and start the flow of drugs.    

“Are you sure about this?” He whispers.    

“It’s going to be alright.”

Loki blinks rapidly, fighting unconsciousness as they start to pull him under. “Thor-”    

“Shhh, it’s okay. I’m here. Don’t be afraid.”    

“I don’t-” Anxious tears squeeze out of the corner of his eyes.

Thor pets back his hair. “It’s _okay_. I promise.” The drugs prove more powerful than the anxiety and slowly, Loki’s breath evens out and his eyes flutter shut.    

“He’s out, let’s get started.” The slip a mask over his nose and mouth and put up a curtain so Thor doesn’t have to watch as they start to cut into his flesh. Thor keeps his hand on Loki’s forehead and closes his eyes. Power spikes as the mages start unraveling the twisted and mutated threads of magic.    

It takes hours and hours, Loki unnervingly still for the duration. Thor squeezes his eyes shut and tells himself it’s okay, they’re just on Asgard, after one of their various misadventures. They definitely weren’t on some foreign planet, entrusting their lives to complete strangers. Nope, that wasn’t it. Eir would come along any moment now and console him and their mother would scold him for letting Loki get hurt. _Precisely_.    

They finish and stitch the wound back together.    

“If it worked,” They tell Thor. “The wound will be closed by the time he wakes up. His own magic should take over healing now. There will still be a significant scar but it should be white and smooth. Larger than it would have been if he had sought proper healing from the start.”   

“Thank you,” Thor says. “Can I ask…if we had not done this now? How long did he have?”

Two of the physicians exchange a look. “You shouldn’t torment yourself with that answer, your majesty.”    

“Please.”   

“Your ship’s healer was incorrect in her conclusions. This sickness would have killed him. It was a matter of days, your majesty.” The room spins.    

“He was _dying_.”    

“Yes, your majesty. The situation was very grave. But you were lucky, you made it here in time and he will recover fully. He will still be fatigued for some time, and shouldn’t overextend his magic for at least another few weeks, but he will be fine.”    

 _He was dying_ , Thor thinks, watching the even rise and fall of his chest. _He was dying and you nearly lost him again._    

The Valkyrie returns to their room. “How did it go?” She asks quietly, touching his shoulder.    

“He’ll be fine. But Val…he…he was dying.”

Her brow furrows. “I thought Gudrun said-”   

“She was wrong. This sickness would have done it. It was a matter of days, they said.”    

“Shit. Are you okay?” Thor nods tightly. “Do you want to get some air?” He very much does want to. He wants clean air, sunshine, the feel of the breeze on his skin. But he will not allow Loki to wake up without him, as he promised, so he stays.    

The Valkyrie falls asleep in a chair by the door. The drugs start to wear off around sundown and Loki stirs.    

“Worked,” He slurs.    

“Is that a question or a statement?”   

“Statement.” He still hasn’t opened his eyes. He takes a deep breath, tilting his head tiredly towards Thor. “My magic doesn’t hurt anymore.” He smiles faintly.

Thor reaches out and squeezes his hand. “Your magic was hurting you?”    

“Not all the time. Just when I woke up, like it was too tired to wake. Doesn’t, now.”    

“You’re going to be okay. And when you’re feeling a little more lucid we are going to have a very long talk about hiding your pain and how dangerous it is to lie to me. Right, dear brother?”

Loki moans. “Must we?”    

“No more lies, Loki. No more lies, no more secrets, no more hiding yourself in the dark to lick your wounds like an injured cat.”

Loki blinks his eyes open, wincing at the bright lights. “Fine.”    

“See, I know you’re still feeling ill. You agreed with me far too quickly.”    

“Hm. You’re getting good at this.” Loki rolls onto his side. “Did you just call me a cat?”    

“I said you were like a cat.” Thor smooths back his hair. “Will you deny it?”    

“You’re petting me like a cat.” But for his complaints, Loki relaxes, eyes fluttering closed. “I think I need…sleep.”   

“Yes. We’ll talk about this later.”  
   

Three days later he insists on walking himself back to the ship, without assistance.    

“You heard what they said, I am fine.”    

“You’re being selective. They said you _will_ be fine, but that you should take it easy-”    

“I am taking it easy, I’m walking three hundred meters onto the ship, not hiking to Vanaheim.” Loki snaps.    

“Don’t get cranky on me.”    

“I will ask you for help if I need it. Is that sufficient?”    

“Fine.” To Loki’s credit, he makes it nearly all the way back to their room. If they hadn’t run into some concerned citizens, who were quite worried now that the news of his near-death had spread, he might have made it all the way. As it happens, he sways and has to steady himself on the wall just as they meet Bruce in the corridor.

“Hey, you sure you’re okay to be out of the hospital?”    

“Of course,” Loki snaps. “I’m _fine_.”    

“Loki’s always hated being cared for. As soon as he starts feeling even a little bit better he gets very grumpy indeed.” Thor loops Loki’s arm around his shoulders.    

“I hate you.”    

“I love you.” He settles him into bed, silencing all protest with a stern look. Bruce catches them up on the goings-on of the ship, what they’ve missed in the days they’ve been away.    

“We should try to find ice cream, next planet we land on.”

Loki raises an eyebrow at Bruce’s suggestion. “What for?”    

“My mom used to give it to me when I was sick. I had to have my tonsils out as a kid and ice cream made me feel better.”    

“Ice cream?” The Valkyrie asks.    

“It’s milk and sugar, combined and frozen, comes in lots of flavors,” Thor responds.    

“Ah, we had something like that on Sakaar, but it was usually too hot for the actual stuff, only the boss’s favorites got the genuine thing.”    

“I could ask the Hulk…” Bruce and the Valkyrie keep talking about the differences between ice cream…and whatever knockoff they had on Sakaar. Thor glances down at Loki. Despite all his protests that he was fine, he’s already fallen back to sleep, hands resting loosely on his chest.

 _He was dying._ Thor’s smile falters. _He was dying._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, see? You're patience has paid off! Everything's going to be fine _and_ on Thursday you get a super, super fluffy concluding chapter in this saga. 
> 
> I started to have a lot of Thoughts about surgery, magical surgery, how this would work and how it developed, the philosophies that dominate modern surgery and medicine on Earth, why it might not apply/how it could have been different...then I just stopped. And let things happen. (Sometimes it's good not to overthink things too much.) I think this is why Bruce mostly stays out of it too. As soon as Thor's like 'yes magic' his brain just goes static. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	29. Seizure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Revengers. Sakaar. No additional warnings. (Though it's Sakaar so there's always kind of a background implication of consent issues.)
> 
> [The only pure AU of the month! This 100% does not fit with the rest of the chapters, but I couldn't think of anything better and I liked this. So going with it.]
> 
> Loki doesn't remember anything. Luckily, Valkyrie's got an idea to break the spell.

   

“I told you, I don’t have magic!” Loki wants to laugh. These people are insane, claiming he was a prince, that he was a powerful mage, that this blond fellow was his brother. They don’t even look anything alike. It’s madness.   

“I know, we heard you the first thousand times,” Scrapper-142 says, rolling her eyes.    

“Loki,” The brute says patiently.    

“I don’t know how you know my name-“   

“Would you just listen?” Anger explodes out of the blond warrior and Loki winces, flinching back as much as he can, bound in chains as he is. “The Grandmaster has done something to you-“   

“He rescued me-“   

“But I swear, this isn’t you! You’ll see-“   

“Hold on, Thor,” Scrapper-142 lays a hand on the warrior - this Thor’s arm. “I have an idea.” She crouches before him. “Okay, Lackey, you don’t have magic. I believe you. I’ll even unbind you,” Thor makes a surprised noise. “And I’ll escort you back to the Grandmaster, if you’ll humor me for just a moment.”   

“I don’t know…” Thor starts, but Scrapper-142 doesn’t look at him. She keeps her eyes locked to Loki’s.    

“If you don’t have magic, you won’t be able to summon a light to your palm.”   

“Of course not,” Loki scoffs.    

“So prove it.”   

“I’m sorry?”    

“Hold out your hand.” Loki hesitates but the Scrapper rolls her eyes. “If you want me to release you, I told you, you’ll have to humor me. So hold our your hand.”  

“Fine.” Loki takes his hands, bound together, and puts his palm face up between the two of them.    

“Good. Now picture a flame. Your majesty,” She looks over her shoulder. “What color should the flame be?”

Thor looks decidedly unhappy about all this, and his eyes grow even more sad at the question. “Green. His seidr is green.”    

“Okay, La-, _Loki_ , picture a green flame.” He rolls his eyes, but does so. “A green flame in the center of your palm. It doesn’t hurt, but it feels warm and familiar. It is a part of you.” Scrapper-142’s voice is low and calm. “Now breathe with me, in,” Loki finds himself inhaling in time with the Scrapper without really thinking about it. “And out. In, yes that’s it, keep breathing. Good, just like that. Now picture there’s green light inside you, in your core. A tendril of that light, just a little, travels,” She places a finger on his chest, her other hand coming to cup the back of his outstretch hand. “From your chest, down your arm, and into your palm. It becomes the flame.” She traces the path she described, once, twice, three times as they continue to breathe together.    

Loki feels strange. There’s something in his mind, blurring his thoughts together. Something in his chest burns.    

“Take the light, take your seidr, and bring the flame into your palm.” His fingers of their own will, snap back, spasming. His breath stutters and he loses the rhythm but it doesn’t matter because there’s _light_ , there’s light gathering in the center of his palm, growing brighter by the second. Then it starts to burn, spreading up his arm and to his chest.    

“Valkyrie, his nose.” Blood, hot and salty, drips from his nose and onto his mouth.    

“Thor, be ready to catch him, it’s going to happen fast now.” The pain was picking up. Pain shooting down all his veins, a fire worse that even the obedience disks, gathering in his chest and then traveling up his spine into the base of his skull and it hurts so badly, he’s going to burst, he’s going to die-    

He collapses back onto a broad chest. An arm wraps around his shoulders and reality blinks out.  
       

Thor was apprehensive about this method of freeing Loki from the Grandmaster from the start. And back then he didn’t know how dramatic it was all going to be. When he sees the surprise in Loki’s green eyes at the familiar glint of seidr in his hand, he almost has hope. But the surprise turns quickly to pain and when blood starts flowing from his nose, and the Valkyrie - seemingly knowing that this was going to happen - half turns and tells him, “be ready to catch him,” Thor becomes apprehensive again. He positions himself behind his gasping brother, just in time to catch Loki’s weight on his own body as his eyes roll back in his head and he tilts backwards.    

Loki’s head falls on his shoulder. Thor wraps an arm around his brother’s waist, the other around his chest and shoulders and holds tight as his brother spasms violently.    

“What the hell is happening here?”    

“Don’t worry about it, Banner,” Thor says as he struggles to maintain his grip on Loki, whose spasms have not ceased. “We wanted this to happen…apparently.”    

“Thor, he’s having a seizure, what the hell is going on?”    

“He’s getting his magic back,” The Valkyrie says simply. “Hopefully his memories too, or else we’ll have a _very_ angry, brainwashed sorcerer on our hands.”    

“Jesus Christ, getting his magic back looks like that?” Thor moves his hand to Loki’s head, keeping it still on his shoulder. His brother is still seizing, the tremors wracking his body.    

“Shhh, Loki, it’s alright, you’ll be alright,” He whispers, hoping Loki could hear him.   

“What, you thought breaking magical bonds was going to look pretty?”    

“How did you know this was going to work anyways?”   

“I’ll be honest, I was guessing a little bit, combining two principles. There are some illnesses out there that, when they infect a mage, they kind of…stop up their magic. Part of the cure is for the mage to perform simple spells. The first few times, it looks like this, but as the mage recovers it’s not quite as dramatic. What the Grandmaster does is essentially an artificial version, blocking up that magic inside the mage so he can still feed off their power, but they can’t use it themselves.   

“The other part is the first exercises natural born mages learn, conjuring the flame. At least, it was the first exercise taught to children when I was on Asgard, and among the Vanir too, so I had to figure things hadn’t changed too much since I left and that your mother would have used the flame to teach Loki to harness and focus his seidr. I thought following the familiar pattern of the exercise would trigger the spell by muscle memory and break through the blocks.” A memory was returning to Thor, of Loki sitting in his mothers lap, with his tiny palm in hers and her pointer finger on his chest. His eyes were closed and his breath even, as light steadily grew in his hand and his mother smiled proudly.    

Loki makes a choking sound in his arms and Thor is snapped back to the present in an instant.    

“Okay, well it seems like it’s working, but it’s not going to be much help if he asphyxiates before he comes out of the seizure. Shouldn’t we get him to a hospital or something, do they have hospitals on this…planet…?”   

“Where he’ll be brought right back to the Grandmaster, and we’ll be executed for trying to take away his favorite toy. We just have to wait, and let his own seidr do the work.”    

A minute later, the convulsions start to ease. Loki goes boneless against Thor and he finally gasps in a full breath.    

“That’s it, brother, just breathe.”

The Valkyrie kneels before him again, taking his hands in hers. Loki’s eyes blink slowly open and he struggles to lift his head. “Loki, can you make the flame?”

Even though he looks exhausted, he nods weakly and extended his bound hand. Easily, the flame lights in the palm of his hand.    

“I can do a great deal more than that,” He says, his words slurred but blissfully familiar. Loki sounds like Loki again and Thor could weep with relief.    

“Loki, do you know me?” He asks, quietly.

Loki turns his face towards him. “Thor…brother…” Thor tangles his fingers in Loki’s dark curls and the tension bleeds out of him. Loki's brow furrows. “Sorry.”   

“It’s alright, you’re alright now.”    

“Unbind me? Please?” The Valkyrie unbinds the chains and Loki struggles out of his brother’s grip. “Bathroom-“   

“There.” Loki, on trembling legs, bolts for the bathroom, Thor following close behind. He manages barely to keep Loki from slamming his knees into the ceramic tile floor as he collapses over the toilet, heaving. Thor gathers his hair, holding it back as Loki vomits up everything he’s consumed in the past few days.    

“Shower,” He croaks when the heaves stop. He stumbles to his feet and Thor helps him stay standing, pushing him into the shower and turning the spray on. Loki shudders, and turns the tap as hot as it can go.    

“Loki, be careful-“   

“Shut up.” He’s gasping, turning his face towards the spray. After a minute, he turns the knob in the other direction, making it ice cold. “Help me…help me get out of these damn, filthy clothes.” His long, pale fingers tear at the fabric and Thor helps him to strip, tossing away the now sodden clothes. Thor waits patiently until Loki turns off the water, then hands him the only dry towel. Loki conjures himself his own clothes, calling them forth from the secret dimensional pocket he stores everything in. He flicks a hand and the towel folds itself and floats to the table. Thor wonders if he’s throwing around his magic just to prove to himself that he can.    

Then he turns and looks Thor in the eye for the first time since coming out of the seizure.    

“We have to get off this planet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about trying to fit this into the larger AU but by that point I had already written Drugged/Hostage and it definitely doesn't fit with those. So for the rest of this AU, take it as Ragnarok happened exactly as it did in canon, things just start branching off from the post-credit scene. 
> 
> The trope of 'the Grandmaster steals Loki's memories/magic' is so. much. horrible. fun. 
> 
> Also sorry for the lateness again! I had to rush to school to meet with a professor early and then the internet at the university just randomly decided to stop working so I had to figure that out. 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	30. Caregiver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Revengers. The Ark. No additional warnings. 
> 
> [The last part of Fever/Severe Illness trilogy.] A quiet night on the ship, long before everything goes to hell.

The healers at the Citadel warned him that it would take time for him to feel normal again, but Loki has never been one for patience. He fatigues easily still and the slightest magics drain him like never before. He knows he will be back to full strength before long, but it is still a frustrating, slow process, that leaves him irritable and on edge.    

He’s walking in circles around the ship, pacing to prove to himself that he can and trying not to feel stir-crazy, when he hears a small voice call his name.    

“Prince Loki?” He turns to see a small gathering of very small Asgardians, peaking out of the doorway at him.    

“Oh, hello,” He says, mustering up a smile.    

“Prince Loki, we wanted to see if you were feeling better,” The ringleader says. He crouches before him.   

“I am, much better, thank you for asking.” The child blushes. “You wouldn’t be asking because you’d like some illustrations to your stories, would you?” He’d been casting the illusions to entertain the children since a few nights after Ragnarok, and he’d heard they’d been quite disappointed when he fell ill. The children brighten.

“Will you? Please?” The rest join in the cajoling. Loki makes a show of hesitating.    

“Well, alright, I suppose I can do _one_ story,” He says with a dramatic sigh. The children cheer and he ushers them back inside the creche.

Leaving them a little while later, he has to admit that he was _perhaps_ not ready to summon the illusion of the dragon. His head spins and his chest twinges and he has to brace himself on the wall for a minute until his vision clears.    

“Your highness? Are you alright?” One of the young farmer’s sons, one of the ones who the Valkyrie had been training as a guard. He’s taken his responsibility very seriously.    

“I’m fine,” Loki says quickly, to head off further concern. “Just a spell of dizziness, but it’s passed.”

The young man stands up very straight. “Will you allow me to escort you to your destination, my prince? To make sure you get there safely?” Loki sighs. Everyone was so insistent on _coddling_ him. Didn’t they see that Thor fussed over him enough for everyone? Why couldn’t they just leave him be, let him fall if he did.    

“Fine,” He says, perhaps too sharply. The young man doesn’t seem to detect the tone, instead looking extremely pleased with himself.    

Once Loki is outside the ship’s bar, insisting that he’ll be alright for the last five feet to enter, the guard takes his leave, bowing deeply. Then he goes into the light and warmth of the bar.    

“You’re late, brother,” Thor says.    

“Worried?” Thor frowns at him. “I apologize, I ran into some of the children who insisted I entertain them. Took me hostage in fact, wouldn’t release me until I gave them what they wanted.” Loki flops onto one of the couches.    

“Uh huh.”    

“They can be very persuasive.”    

“And did this entertainment that they persuaded you to do involve you using your magic, which you are not supposed to be doing until you’re better?”   

“It might have.” Thor gives him A Look, which Loki shoots back, but before Thor can even open his mouth to nag, the Valkyrie opens a bottle of some bubbly liquid with a pop and Bruce and Heimdall enter carrying dinner.    

The food is warm and filling. Thor keeps glancing at him to make sure he’s had enough, then hands him a glass of the alcohol the Valkyrie had opened. The liquor makes him feel floaty and relaxed, and he rests back on the couch, just listening as the others talk and laugh. The sound of it is almost as lulling as the drink.    

He doesn’t realize he’s closed his eyes until he feels Thor’s hand, gentle on his arm.    

“Loki,” Thor says quietly. “Do you want to go to bed?”    

“No,” He shakes off the drowsiness. “No, I’m fine, I just drifted off.”    

“Are you sure?”    

“Yes. I want to stay, I don’t want to go back.” The room would be empty and dark and _silent_. Here was warm and light and the sounds of the other three talking amongst themselves, better than any lullaby he could think of. “‘M fine.”

Thor nods. “Okay.” His hand lingers on Loki’s arm for a moment more, then he returns to the conversation.    

Loki hangs on for a few minutes more before his eyes feel heavy and drift closed. He drowses for a while, listening to the sound of their voices until he falls into proper, deep sleep.  
   

“So the city _itself_ was floating?” The Valkyrie says, incredulous.    

“Yup,” Bruce says. “It was insane. So insane that the Hulk apparently decided to just get the hell out of there. Stole a jet and ended up on Sakaar. So maybe I should have stayed.”    

“But then you wouldn’t have gone to…how many planets are you up to now?”    

“I’ve stopped tracking. I think last count was twelve and that was a while ago.”    

“Thor,” The Valkyrie nods her head at the couch next to him. Thor turns. Loki is sound asleep, head resting on the arm of the chair at an odd angle. Thor touches his side. He doesn’t stir.    

“He needs it,” Thor remarks, dropping the volume of his voice so he won’t wake him.   

“Should we get him to bed?”    

“No, let’s let him sleep. I asked earlier and he didn’t want to go. I think he didn’t want to be alone.”    

“Move his head at least, he’s giving me a stiff neck just looking at him,” Bruce says, rolling his own neck in sympathy. Carefully, Thor shifts Loki until he’s laying with head resting on his lap. He runs his fingers through the dark curls, starting to absentmindedly play with the strands, loosely braiding them.    

“Did either of them even tell you about the jam incident?” Heimdall says with a mischievous smile.    

“Ah, that could have been a tragedy.”    

“The All-mother was on a visit to her relatives on Vanaheim, leaving the All-father alone with the children.”    

“A disaster if I ever heard one,” Valkyrie says, taking a drink.    

“A new ambassador had brought a basket full of delicacies from his home-world. In it was this jam that is very good…but very sticky. It was left lying around in the royal family’s private quarters. And Thor managed to cover his brother’s hair in it.”    

“I maintain he got into it first!” Thor says. “I swear, I found him playing with it and just…helped.”    

“How old _were_ you?” Bruce says through peels of laughter.    

“Oh, I think I was around the human equivalent of…4? Maybe 5. Loki was barely a toddler.”    

“The All-father was about to cut off all of Loki’s hair when the Queen returned and intervened. She was furious. Refused to leave Odin alone with them for a long time.”

“I’m just picturing the Frigga’s face,” Valkyrie laughs. “I would have loved to see that.”   

“She burst in to Father holding the shears over Loki’s head as he wailed. Grabbed Loki and started shouting about vinegar,” Thor chuckles. “It turns out it washes out at once if you just rinse it first in vinegar. She was so mad.”    

“That sounds like the time I got gum in my hair…” The conversation continues, Thor occupying his hands with braiding.

Loki stirs. “What are you doing?” He murmurs.    

“Hush. I miss my hair.”    

“Hm. Okay.” And he’s out again. Thor smiles down at him and doesn’t think he could imagine loving something more than this.    

They continue talking until late in the night, when they’re all starting to drift off. Valkyrie picks up some of the scattered bottles and dishes.    

“Need help with him?” She asks.

Thor shakes his head. “Just get the doors for me.” He gently shifts Loki so he can get off the couch, then scoops him into his arms. He’s out cold, barely stirs at Thor picking him up except to rest his head on his shoulder.    

He carries him through the halls, the Valkyrie helping with doors. Bruce pulls down the blankets of their bed before climbing into the one he shares with the Valkyrie. Thor removes Loki’s boots and heavy outer shirt, and rolls him to his side.    

“Night, guys,” Bruce says. The Valkyrie grunts in return and flops down next to Bruce.    

“Goodnight,” Thor says, turning out the lights and crawling into bed.    

The sounds of soft, even breathing in the dark. Loki rolls towards him. The Valkyrie starts to snore.    

Thor, for the first time in a while, doesn’t think he’s doing such a bad job taking care of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you just need some gratuitous fluff at the end of your Whumptober. Ah, this one is terrible though, knowing it will all go to hell before long. They'll find that they're going to miss their time on the Ark. 
> 
> Heads up, the chapter count is going to shoot past 31 tomorrow, but don't get too excited because...I'm adding a table of contents. Yes, I'm that #extra. I want to profoundly thank all of the readers who have been following along the way I intended, out of chronological order, but there has been some demand for a guide/key, so I thought I'd make it easier on future readers. I still _want_ people to read it straight through, but I can't control that and, you know, if people only want to read an abridged version, or just certain chapters, or need to skip the more gratuitous whumpy chapters, who am I to make that harder? But, thank you all so, so much for following along this past month. 
> 
> Last one tomorrow! 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft.of.frogs.tumblr.com


	31. Showdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Loki. The Ark / House Avengers. Warnings: torture, death of unnamed characters, brief mind control, strangulation (aka a version of That Scene), threat of execution
> 
> All things must come to an end. Two transitions.

“Thor was looking for you, on the bridge,” Valkyrie says as she passes.

Loki sets his tablet down, finished with updating the inventory after their departure from their latest supply mission. “Did he say why?” He asks warily.    

“He didn’t. Looked serious, but not angry?”    

“Well. That’s good. Thanks for passing the message along.” Loki finds Thor staring out at the stars with his arms crossed over his chest, looking thoughtful. “Valkyrie said you were looking for me.”

Thor starts, and turns. “Right, yes, come here, brother.” They stand shoulder to shoulder at the window. “Heimdall and I checked our bearings while we were on-planet. It seems our journey is almost ended. We are a month away from Midgard.”    

“Oh.”    

“I thought we should start talking about a strategy for negotiations.”   

“And prepare ourselves, I assuming that’s why you told me first.” Loki sighs. “I’ll admit I’m a bit apprehensive. Do you really still think it’s a good idea?”    

“The people of Earth love me.”   

“Let me rephrase. Do you think it’s a good idea to bring _me_ to Earth?”    

“Oh, I don’t know, brother,” Thor says, patting his back. “For once, I feel like everything’s going to work out.” Out of the corner of his eye, Loki sees something moving.

The spaceship that rises before them is massive, dark, and jagged. It blots out the light of the stars.    

Loki feels his entire world come crashing down around his ears.   

He must make a sound, because Thor turns away from the window towards him.    

“Loki, what-” He stops when he sees the look of terror on his face. Instinctively, he grabs Loki. “Is that…is that what I think it is?”    

“We’re too late,” Loki chokes out. “He’s caught up to us.” Thor’s fingers dig into his arm.    

“Okay, Loki, we planned for this, just stay calm. Go get the Tesseract. Go!” Loki manages to wrench himself away, sprinting through the halls to the place they hid the Tesseract. The alarm starts to blare. The Tesseract and its warm blue glow are indifferent to his fear. He shoves it into the inter-dimensional space he hides everything else, then turns.    

And falls as the first blow strikes their ship. He stumbles out of the room and runs into a group of civilians, frightened huddled together.    

“Go to the escape pods, like we practiced,” He commands. “Now, quickly!” He ushers them along as another staggering blow rocks the ship. He makes it halfway to the command center before their shields fully fail and he’s thrown back. A fire has started in the engines somewhere. It’s getting hot and stifling, the stench of mechanical smoke thickening the air. Then he hears footsteps.    

“Hello, Loki,” a familiar voice says. “You’ve been avoiding us.” He stumbles to his feet and runs.    

The sounds of screams and death chase him.    

 _No, no, no, no, no_ , he thinks desperately. Then he hears a very young voice whimper. He stops, turning in the direction of the sound. There’s a child, separated from the group, crying as Proxima Midnight stands over him with her staff. She’s about to bring it down on the child’s head when Loki strikes her with a bolt of magic. She falls but Corvus Glaive was on her flank and his massive form crashes into Loki’s. They go down, Loki summoning a knife to strike into his side. He’s about to put another one through his jugular when there’s a familiar pressure on his mind.    

He’s never really recovered from his first time under Thanos, and his mind gives way easily. Ebony Maw is inside him now, like he never left.   

“Get up,” Ebony Maw says, and his limbs obey. Glaive points his weapon at his head. “Drop the knives.” His hands release and the blades clatter to the ground. Proxima Midnight gets to her feet, shaking off the residual magic. She looks at him and smiles.    

The child has not moved, not run, cowering in the corner.    

“Don’t-” But it’s too late. She runs the boy through with her staff and with a final, rattling breath, the Asgardian boy is dead. Loki closes his eyes.    

“You’ve been very bad,” Maw says. “Come with us.” He directs Loki into the corridor. “Go ahead of us,” He says to Proxima Midnight. “Tell the master we’ve captured the other one.”    

Thanos is waiting in the wide hall they’d used as a gathering place. The ship is already starting to disintegrate around them, burning and groaning. Loki nearly trips a dozen times on their walk to his doom, but he manages to keep his feet. He stops in the center of the room, before Thanos who is standing over a limp form at his feet.

Thor.    

Loki keeps his face blank, struggling to control his breathing.    

Ebony Maw walks in a circle around them.   

“Hear me, and rejoice. You have had the privilege of being save by the great Titan. You may think this is suffering.” This once made sense to Loki. This seemed so true that even well into his prison stay on Asgard he believed in it. It had taken years to make him realize those thoughts were not organic to his own mind.    

Thor struggles to his hands and knees, gasping. Loki glances down at him and quickly looks back up at the Titan, heart racing. “No. It is salvation. Universal scales tipped towards balance because of your sacrifice. Smile, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.”    

“You disappoint me, Loki of Asgard.” Loki says nothing. “You were supposed to bring me the Tesseract, and you not only failed, you have also lost my scepter. But at least you’ve brought the Tesseract to me, at long last.”    

“We don’t have it,” Thor croaks, spitting blood onto the floor. Loki’s hands fist at his sides.    

“Oh, but you do.”    

“I can make him give it to us, master.” Ebony Maw extends a greedy hand towards him.    

“No, I think he’ll give it up willingly.” Thanos grabs Thor’s head, dragging him up to his knees.        

“We don’t have it!” Thor insists.    

“I think you do. Last chance, the Tesseract or your brother’s head. Your choice.” Loki says nothing, gritting his teeth. _We planned this, you have to let this happen,_ he repeats to himself, over and over. You can’t give up the Tesseract. Not for anything. Those had been Thor’s words. During their last planning meeting, when they updated and reviewed their plan for this exact situation, Thor had held him back.    

_“You can’t give up the Tesseract once you have it, not for anything.”_

_“I won’t,” Loki replied. “They’ve tortured me before, I can withstand it.”_

_“And if they torture me?” That brought him up short. “Loki, you cannot give up the Tesseract. They will torture me but you can’t.”_

_“I don’t know if I can,” He admitted. “Watch them torture you.” Thor had just smiled sadly at him._

_“You can. You have to.”_    

He can’t.    

Thanos uses the power stone, boring it into the side of Thor’s skull. Thor howls, jaw hanging slack, limbs jerking as the pain overtakes him.    

Loki tries to keep his eyes on Thanos.    

_“I can’t watch,” Loki had said, breathing hard._

_“Then don’t watch,” Thor replied calmly. “Keep your eyes on something else.”_ Loki looks at Thanos. Looks at Thanos and watches the glee in his eye at Thor’s screams, at Loki’s clear terror.    

Something in the tenor of Thor’s screams changes, he’s sure of it, and it breaks his concentration. He glances down again, at Thor’s writhing, dying body and-  

“Alright, _stop!”_ He shouts, unable to stand it for another second. The screaming dies off and he closes his eyes. He raises his arm and brings forth the Tesseract. 

“Good.” Thanos lets go of Thor’s head. He starts to drop to the floor, but twisted metal flies up and binds him in place, on his knees. A final pieces of metal twists around his face, gagging him. He keeps his eye locked on Loki. “Good.” Thanos takes the Tesseract from him and hands it off to Glaive.    

He turns back to Loki with a grin on his face. With the hand clad in the gauntlet, he grabs Loki by the throat and lifts him.    

Air is sealed off in a second, his throat closed by Thanos’s tight fist. His hands scrabble desperately around the gauntlet as he chokes, legs kicking in the empty air. His lungs burn and there’s a pressure in his head, growing, growing, _growing_ as his chest heaves with no result.    

He can’t see anymore, the blackness closing in on his vision as his eyes roll back in his head, but he can hear Thor’s muffled screams from behind the gag.    

Then the pressure lifts. The air streams into his lungs as he hits the metal gate of the spaceship, flat on his back. Coughing, writhing. Breathing so hard he thinks he’ll break from the force of it. There’s a screech of metal. Someone talking. A tentative touch to his shoulder, then a heavier one, a weight leaning on his chest.

“Loki.” Thor’s head presses to his shoulder, his hand tightly grasping the front of his shirt.   

“Bring them,” Thanos says. They drag Thor off him, then hands are on his shoulders and his legs and he’s being lifted, carried.    

To Sanctuary.

  
___

  
  
Thor moves quickly and quietly through the halls, heart pounding. He doesn’t have long, if what Tony told him is true, that the cavalry’s on the way.    

He bursts into Loki’s room, startling him. “Thor, what are you-”

He yanks the book out of Loki’s hands and sets it aside. “Loki, put on your boots, we have to go. _Now_.” Loki complies. “Stark has betrayed us. He called the authorities, I don’t know how much longer we have.”    

“If we get outside the walls of this place, I can teleport us away.”    

“How far?”   

“Not far, not since the Tesseract, but maybe far enough into the woods…” Thor grabs his hand and pulls him out the door. “What did you do to Stark?”    

“Shorted out his suit. It will take some time for him to reboot it, but the government - SHIELD, I don’t know - they’re on their way.”    

“What will they do to us, should they catch us?”

Thor tightens his grip on Loki’s hand. “I don’t know. This way.” He drags his brother to a stairwell and they run up it. The stairs open out onto the compound’s roof.    

And onto three helicopters, pointing their lights at them and Secretary Ross standing before them.    

“It’s no use,” He says over the noise of the rotary blades. “We have this place surrounded. There are snipers in these choppers ready to take a shot. There’s no where to go, your majesty.” The title is dripping with disdain.    

“Do not let go of my hand,” Thor says to Loki, who nods tightly. “Secretary, this is hardly necessary. Let’s just go inside and the four of us can talk about your concerns.”

“My concerns are we’ve been allowing two aliens - one of whom is known to be hostile to this planet - roam around one of our most secure compounds. Live here, with a population center not 200 miles away. My concerns are to protect our people by eliminating threats.”    

“And we assured Stark, we are not threats, we bring warning-”    

“Yes, that cockamamy story about some Titan looking for rocks. You didn’t think we’d believe that bullshit, did you?”    

“It is the truth and to ignore it-”    

“It doesn’t matter. What matters to me is that the two of you are going to come with us, now. You will be held somewhere where it is safe, where you can be contained.” Loki’s hand has gone cold in his.

He squeezes. “When I say when,” He whispers. “As far as you can.” Loki squeezes back to show he’s understood. Thor feels magic gathering around them.   

“Things are different now, Thor. You can’t just run around doing as you please. There are rules now. There is finally a command structure. You will do as we say, when we say, and there isn’t any room for interpretation.”    

“And what will you do with my brother?”    

“To be frank, we hadn’t decided yet. There are some that think he still could be useful. If you ask me, a swift execution is the more appropriate-”    

“Now!” Reality bends, but Loki’s hand is tight on his. They collapse into a pile of leaves in the forest.    

“Damn you,” Loki gasps, landing flat on his back.    

“Did it work?”    

“Not as well as you hoped. Provoking me to fear to get a shot of adrenaline, just to get us a few meters farther? That’s low, brother.”    

“I’m sorry,” He says, and means it. He helps Loki to his feet and gives him a rough kiss to the forehead. “I’m just trying to get us out of here. We have to move, and quickly.” They cut through the underbrush, their only light Loki’s faint green conjured witchlight. A helicopter flies overhead and Thor quickly motions Loki to extinguish the light. They duck down, huddled together in the brush until it passes.    

“Come on,” Thor says when it is quiet again. He will not let go of Loki’s hand.    

They move away from the compound and Thor almost thinks they might make it before he hears a familiar sound of propulsion. Thunder rolls in the sky.    

“Loki, _move_ ,” He yanks his brother’s hand harder, egging him on. They’re too slow. The blast strikes at their feet and Thor only has just enough time to grab Loki and roll with him. They struggle to their feet and make it a few more meters before he strikes again. Again, they get back up, unwilling to surrender yet. But Tony gets ahead of them.    

He lands in their path, mask flipping up to reveal his face.    

“I thought we were friends,” He says.    

“I thought so too,” Thor says.    

“Come on, Thor, I’m not the bad guy here. The one clinging to your hand and putting stuff in your head is the bad guy.”    

“I am _not_ doing _either_ of those things,” Loki says darkly.    

“Loki, say _nothing_.” Thor snaps. “Stark, this is ridiculous. You’ve gone mad since I’ve been away.”    

“I’m not the one who’s crazy. I’ve done what has to be done. Who cleaned up the fallout from Sokovia, huh? Me. You were off God knows where, Steve was up here ignoring the world, and I was the one in Washington, and at the Hague, and helping to resettle refugees. The same with New York. You hang out, what, two days into cleanup before vanishing back to Asgard with the Tesseract _and_ our culprit? Assuring us that Asgardian justice would do the right thing. Well, pal, looks like us and Asgard have pretty different ideas of justice.”    

“So what? You want a trial then? A show conviction?”    

“That’s what _I_ want. Jury of his peers and whatever. But all this shit? That’s assured us there will be no trials, not for people like us. Just the Raft.” Ah. The mysterious Raft.    

“And what is the Raft?” Thor sneers.   

“You’re going to find out.” The helicopters approach. “Now surrender, or they’ll shoot you both down on the spot.”

Thor looks at Loki.    

“I don’t have another jump in me,” Loki says quietly. “And you don’t have enough of a storm to take them all out _and_ get us out of here. I’ve no idea what this…Raft is,” Thor hasn’t had time to tell him. He had neglected to tell Loki about all of this and now his brother is going in blind. A pulse of guilt. “But I don’t see any other options.”   

“I suppose we’ll have to surrender then.”    

“Get on your knees, hands on your heads.” Stark sounds profoundly miserable about the whole thing. “I wish things could have been different.” 

“So do I,” Thor says.    

It takes effort to make himself let go of Loki’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's it then. The end of the month. November 30. 31 prompts down. 
> 
> Thank you all so, so, so much for following along this month. This really started at the start of October as super self-indulgent 'I don't care what people think I'm going to write what the hell I want' and then it turned into the longest work I've ever produced. I've had a lot of fun posting every day, and I will miss it a little bit, though I'm glad for the break. I have other things in the works, including the much promised sequel (though I'm not making any promises for when I'll get around to posting it). 
> 
> You're welcome to come follow me on tumblr for general nonsense and writing progress. _Polite_ encouragements to work on the sequel will be heeded ;-) 
> 
> Thank you all again! <3 I fell a bit off the comment response bandwagon, and likely won't be as response in the future now that I'm not posting every day, but even if I don't respond know that I see and cherish your comments!
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	32. 18.5 BONUS Disappeared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor & Heimdall. The Ark. Warnings: implied sexual assault.
> 
> '17. Drugged/18. Hostage' from Thor’s POV. Thor never thought he would see the Grandmaster again. He was wrong.

It’s not like he expected them to get back _early_. He just didn’t think they would be this _late_. Thor didn’t necessarily approve of the Valkyrie and Loki’s little jaunts to these seedier planets and stations, but more often than not they bring some extra funds to the ship, which he can’t turn his nose up at. And these outings served to let off a little steam among the two least stable members of his council. He feared keeping Loki on too tight a leash would only lead to renewed fighting, or Loki wanting to leave him. He doesn’t think he could take Loki leaving him now.    

The Valkyrie is the same, seeming like anything might push her over the edge, send her straight back to drinking her life away on some backwater. If allowing them their misadventures meant they came back…so be it.    

Thor glances at the time again and sighs.  
   

As the hours tick by with no sign of them, Thor grows more and more anxious.    

“Now you know how I felt,” Bruce says, when Thor seeks him out. “When you guys didn’t come back from that castle.”    

“The castle where that queen nearly stole our magic?!”    

“Oh right,” Bruce looks up from repairing some electrical circuits. “I guess that’s not going to make you feel much better, is it?”    

He’s pacing in front of the windows when Heimdall returns with the food supplies.    

“Your majesty, I wouldn’t be too concerned-”   

“I feel that something is wrong.”

Heimdall listens patiently. “Do you truly feel that something is wrong, or are you just worried?”    

“I feel that something is wrong. They sometimes stay out late, yes, sometimes days, but they’ve never failed to check in. They’ve never missed a deadline, and the Valkyrie said she didn’t intend for them to spend the night.”

Heimdall is quiet for a few moments as Thor’s heart beats fast in his chest.    

“I believe you might be right, your majesty,” He says finally and Thor’s tenuous hold on calm shatters.  
   

Heimdall cannot see them, not precisely, but he knows for sure now that they are not held up by their own accord.    

“A being of tremendous power cloaks them,” He says. “My sight has not been the same since Ragnarök. Perhaps once I would have been able to see around this, but now,” He sighs. “I cannot.”    

“A being of tremendous power?” Thor paces, lightning sparking at his fingertips. “Who, who could-” It dawns on him then, the possibility that perhaps they had escaped Sakaar too easily, but he doesn’t say it out loud. Not yet. “I will go first to the gambling hall, you start at the-”   

“No, your majesty,” Heimdall says. “You must stay here. If someone has kidnapped the Valkyrie and your brother that makes it even more dangerous for you to go rushing off into the unknown. You will remain here until we have a better grasp of the situation.”   

“You can not expect me to sit by while my brother is in danger-”   

“I did not say that. I just believe we should not go in blindly. And I think we should pull the ship back from this station. There’s a moon not too far away, we can orbit there.”   

“Leave?” His voice cracks.    

“We get the people away, and we take a pod for any rescue attempt. Alright, my king?”

Thor reluctantly agrees. He watches as the station grows smaller and smaller, feeling something akin to guilt. Abandonment. He’s abandoning them.    

He knows he is not but it still feels that way.    

He wishes there was something he could hit, but there is nothing.  
   

“My king,” Heimdall says, finding him brooding before the windows. “We are being hailed.”  
   

Of course, _of course_ , they had escaped far too easily. He should have seen this coming, should have prepared just as much for the Grandmaster catching up to them as Thanos. Thor had been so _terrified_ of Thanos, once he had understood the implications behind the Titan’s power and his brother’s connection to him, that he had failed to anticipate this calamity.    

He could only hope it was not a fatal mistake.    

“Wow, Sparkles, I lo-ove what you’ve done with the place!” The Grandmaster says brightly. “I mean, it’s a little _crowded_ , but the gardens? Fitting that space with fake greenhouses? That’s just ingenious, just brilliant, really-”    

“Enough!” Thor booms from his seat at the head of the hall. “Where are they?”   

“Whew, straight to the point, no small talk, not even a ‘how’ve ya been’, ‘what happened after we ruined your planet’, nothing?” The lightning travels down his arms and through the chair. Thor takes a trembling breath to try and get himself under control. Heimdall’s hand is heavy on his shoulder. “Fine, Sparkles. King Sparkles. They’re alive, if that’s what you’re so worried about.” He puts his hand into a pocket and retrieves a flat disk. A tap and an image appears in the air.    

They are bound back to back, hands at their sides. They are gagged and blindfolded. Loki’s head is bent at an odd angle, resting on the Valkyrie’s shoulder. For a heart stopping moment, Thor can’t tell if they’re breathing, but then he can see the rise and fall of their chests, slow, too slow.    

Loki’s head tosses. The Valkyrie shifts.    

Thor’s rage explodes.  
   

The Grandmaster leaves them to ‘think it over.’    

Thor cannot stop _sparking_ , leaving little bolts of lightning trailing him as he paces.

“Your majesty,” Heimdall says. “We have no where near the amount he is asking for. And without the ship-”   

“Asgard will be vulnerable, even more vulnerable. Yes, I know.” Thor stops in his tracks. “I don’t know what to do. _What_ do we do?”    

“I don’t know if it will work,” Heimdall responds, his voice eternally calm. “But I have an idea.”  
   

Together, they piece together a plan. A rescue. Heimdall barely even argues when Thor insists on being the one to go in after them.  
   

He slips down the narrow corridor, listening to the sound of the imperial guns as they strike the station’s metal. He pauses, for a moment, when they falter, but another boom shakes the entire station and he’s off again.    

The door isn’t even locked, the Grandmaster had been so confident in his power. It opens easily under his hand, revealing a tired but grinning Valkyrie.  
   

“To answer your previous question, majesty, we’re fine, but the Grandmaster has been keeping us under some pretty heavy sedation, to explain his highness’s sudden tongue-tied…ness.” The Valkyrie sounds equally tongue tied, words rambling and slurred, but instead of commenting on that, Thor goes to check on Loki. His brother’s pupils are as round as saucers, black swallowing the green almost entirely. He blinks up at Thor with a mixture of confusion and awe, like he’s not sure Thor is even really here. Thor doesn’t even really think about doing it, just automatically wraps his hand around Loki’s neck to cradle his head. Loki leans into it, still looking up at him with confusion, and Thor can feel how his pulse beats erratically under his palm.    

“Hm. Very heavy sedation, indeed.”  
   

Loki is nearly free now, but makes no move to rise as Thor cuts the last rope around his ankles.    

“I think there are supposed to be ceremonies for this sort of thing…” He remembers his own, of course. (He doesn’t remember the few days _following_ , but that’s another story.) They had attended another, their cousin, the heir to the Vanir throne. How far both ceremonies were from this dingy space station, with their fancy clothes, the drinking, the feasting. They have none of that here. Nothing but themselves, a ragged collection of their people on a stolen ship. Thor can only hope it’s enough. “But you’re the crown prince now, Loki.”    

Thor kisses his forehead, a benediction, as if it could replace a crown.  
   

There’s always a crash, after the adrenaline. Thor’s comes when they’re finally on the shuttle, as Heimdall pilots them back towards the Ark. Thor wraps them both in his arms, kissing the top of Valkyrie’s head, the side of Loki’s. They feel solid and warm, and they _breathe_ against him and feel so alive. Thor relaxes for the first time since the thought that they had been gone a long time had crossed his mind.    

“Don’t you two ever, _ever_ do that to me again.” He holds them in his arms for a long time, then lets them sleep off the drug, lying together on the floor of the shuttle. Thor gives them his cape as a blanket, tucking it carefully around them. He spends the rest of the trip counting breaths and trying not to cry.  
   

It’s still early by the Ark’s circadian rhythm, but the three of them are all exhausted enough to go to bed. Loki and the Valkyrie sleep almost constantly, working the drug out of their systems, and once Thor finishes dealing with some administrative issues relating to their hasty departure, he’s ready to join them. He hasn’t really slept since they were kidnapped and with the crash of adrenaline, he’s exhausted. He crawls into bed and the lights turn out and it starts to feel normal again.    

“ _Don’t_ scare me like that again.”   

“It’s not like I really had a choice,” Loki whispers back. “I didn’t _mean_ to. Not this time, at least.”    

“I know you didn’t,” Thor sighs.

Loki shifts awkwardly, but it brings him closer. “I _am_ sorry,” Loki whispers. “It was my fault, if I hadn’t…on Sakaar…”   

“It wasn’t. Really, Loki, it wasn’t. It was _his_ fault, all of it.”

Loki’s next inhale is a little unsteady. “I can be…such a _fool_ sometimes.” Thor says nothing in response to that, just presses a bit closer. When Loki doesn’t shy away, he drapes his arm over his back and they fall asleep like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this? A bonus chapter? Gasp! 
> 
> I really wanted to write '18. Hostage' from Thor's point of view, and a very, very lovely reader helpfully enabled me. ;-) Plus, I thought it would be a good gift for today, for putting up with the chapter count going up. I didn't want you all to see the extra chapters and then just be disappointed when all it was was a Table of Contents. I'm also planning on fixing some formatting issues in some of the chapters, and editing the tags and I don't know if that makes the edit time/place in the search listings jump up but if it does, at least here is my 'I'm sorry gift'. 
> 
> (Also, I know I should probably put it immediately following 18, but that would have involved renumbering all of the subsequent chapters and I just...too much. So it's tucked here at the end.) 
> 
> Prompts: whumptober2018.tumblr.com  
> Me: bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	33. Table of Contents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes, there is a Table of Contents. 
> 
> My original intent still stands: I meant for these pieces to be read consecutively, Chapters 1-31, in order of the prompts given for Whumptober2018. _Out_ of chronological order.
> 
> But! I understand some people don't have time for all almost 80k and would prefer an abridged version, or to read them in whatever order you choose. And of course, this was Whumptober, there are some prompts that get a little dark and might not be for everybody, while others are a bit more plot-y or fluffy. Up to you! You do you! Here is the official key to reading 'pain and other human sensations.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Individual Chapter descriptions first, followed by the guide to the abridged versions, series, and which ones are the ones I like to call the 'long-and-weird' (self-contained plots over 4k words).

[Table of Contents]  
  
1\. Stabbed  
    The Ark.  
     _Loki gets into a bit of trouble in the market._

2\. Bloody Hands  
    The Ark. Warnings: unnamed character death.  
     _There’s an explosion and Thor’s trying his best._

3\. Insomnia *  
    House Avengers. Warnings: implied past torture.  
_No one’s sleeping in the Avengers household._

4\. ‘No, stop!’  
    The Ark.  
_A fight concludes with an old game._

5\. Poisoned  
    The Ark.  
_A dinner proves dangerous for Thor and the Valkyrie must rush him back to the Ark before it’s too late._

6\. Betrayed */**  
    House Avengers. Warnings: brief dehumanizing language.  
_Thor and Tony have The Fight and Thor takes a field trip to Norway._

7\. Kidnapped ~  
    The Ark. Warnings: rape as a metaphor (it’s not quite ‘mind rape’ but it’s a similar type of violation that another character refers to as rape), brief mentions of child death/murder.  
_Bruce wakes up alone. Things are not as rosy as they seem on this prosperous planet._

8\. Fever  
    The Ark.  
_Thor is woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of coughing._

9\. Stranded  
    The Ark. Warnings: heights, intrusive thoughts, suicidal ideation, revisiting a canonical past suicide attempt.  
_They’ve crash landed and it’s up to Loki to get help. It’s just that he can’t._

10\. Bruises *  
    Sanctuary. Warnings: claustrophobia, aftermath of strangulations.  
_The Ark’s journey is at an end. Thor and Loki spend their first night in the care of Thanos._

11\. Hypothermia  
    The Ark.  
_An engine stall plummets the temperature of the Ark, and Loki’s the only one who can fix it._

12\. Electrocution *  
    Sanctuary. Warnings: torture (both physical and psychological)  
_Thanos’s torturers try to tear them apart._

13\. ‘Stay.’ *  
    The Ark. Warnings: mentions of past torture.  
_The aftermath of certain revelations stir up some old wounds._

14\. Torture */**  
    Sanctuary. Warnings: torture.  
_The tables are turned. Help arrives from a very, very unexpected source._

15\. Manhandling  */**  
    The Ark. Warnings: mentions of past torture, past suicide attempt.  
_There’s something from Wanda’s vision that haunts Thor. He just needs one more piece to put the whole puzzle together._

16\. Bedridden *  
    House Avengers. Warnings: past torture.  
_Thor wakes up but something is missing. Tony thought his night couldn’t get any weirder._

17\. Drugged  
    The Ark. Warnings: nonconsensual drug use.  
_It was a fun night, until they realized something was wrong with their drinks._

18\. Hostage  
    The Ark. Warnings: nonconsensual drug use, sexual assault, nonconsensual voyeurism, mentions of past/threat of future rape. Lot of consent issues, balances that  knife edge of dub/noncon.  
_Directly follows ’17. Drugged.’ The Valkyrie and Loki have been captured by the Grandmaster. The Grandmaster wants many things._

18.5 BONUS: Disappeared (posted as Chapter 32.)  
    The Ark. Warnings: implied sexual assault.  
_17\. Drugged/18. Hostage from Thor’s POV. Thor never thought he would see the Grandmaster again. He was wrong._

19\. Exhaustion  
    The Ark. Warnings: canonical eye injury.  
_Team Revengers’ first night aboard the Ark._

20\. Concussion  
    The Ark.  
_A foolish accident, a poorly placed fall, leads to a quiet conversation._

21\. Harsh Climate  *  
    Sakaar / The Ark / Sanctuary. Warnings: implied sexual assault, psychological torture.  
_Loki’s not a fan of the heat. (In three parts.)_

22\. Friendly Fire */~  
    The Ark. Warnings: death, slavery/human trafficking, forced prostitution, sexual assault, discussion of suicide, execution, dehumanizing language (though there is no real character death)  
_An accident during a fight leaves the Valkyrie in a coma. While Thor, Bruce, and Loki try to wake her, she has to face up to the blood on her hands._

23\. Self-Sacrifice ~  
    The Ark. Warnings: domestic violence, murder/suicide  
_A dark curse befalls the Ark, turning people against each other._

24\. Drowning  
    The Ark. Warnings: discussion of past suicide attempts.  
_The emotional aftermath of ’23. Self-Sacrifice.’ Bruce Banner thinks they all might be drowning._

25\. Restraints */**  
    The Raft. Warnings: dehumanization, threat of execution, claustrophobic restraints  
_After Tony Stark calls in the cavalry, Thor and Loki are processed into the Raft._

26\. Broken Ribs  
    House Avengers. Warning: implied past torture.  
_A quiet morning in House Avengers._

27\. ‘I Can’t Walk’ ~  
    The Ark. Warnings: past attempted murder of children  
     _Thor’s been having visions. It turns out Hela was not quite as out of their childhoods as they thought._

28\. Severe Illness  
    The Ark. Warnings: hospitals, medical procedures  
_Follow up to 8. Fever. Loki starts coughing up blood. They might need a little help with this one._

29\. Seizure  
    Sakaar AU. No additional warnings. (Though it’s Sakaar so there’s always kind of a background implication of consent issues.)  
_Loki doesn’t remember anything. Luckily, Valkyrie’s got an idea to break the spell._

30\. Caregiver  
    The Ark.  
_A quiet night on the ship, long before everything goes to hell._

31\. Showdown  */**  
    The Ark / House Avengers. Warnings: torture, death of a child, brief mind control, strangulation, threat of execution  
_Everything must come to an end. Two transitions._

***The Abridged**

_The short **er** , just the things that figure into the plot leading to the sequel. Still includes some of the whump-ier chapters, like the ones on Sanctuary, but excludes stand alone chapters and the shorter plots._

3\. Insomnia

6\. Betrayed

10\. Bruises

12\. Electrocution

13\. Stay

14\. Torture

15\. Manhandling

16\. Bedridden

19\. Exhaustion

21\. Harsh Climate

22\. Friendly Fire ( _for the foreshadowing..._ )

25\. Restraints

26\. Broken Ribs

31\. Showdown

****The Very Abridged**

_For serious, just the plot and nothing but the plot. The shortest version to get all of the connecting pieces from beginning to end. Still out of linear order, but that's the point. ;-)_

6\. Betrayed

14\. Torture

15\. Manhandling

25\. Restraints

31\. Showdown

**~The Long And Weird**

_Self contained, somewhat weird, plots that go over 4k words._

7\. Kidnapped

22\. Friendly Fire

23\. Self-Sacrifice

27\. "I Can't Walk"

**Multi-Chapter Plots not related to the Main Story:**

_Loki Falls Ill_

8\. Fever

28\. Severe Illness

30\. Caregiver

_The Grandmaster Returns_

17\. Drugged

18\. Hostage

18.5 Disappeared

_The Curse:_

23\. Self-Sacrifice

24\. Drowning

* * *

 

 And because I can't help myself, some references: 

  1. [Prompt List](https://la-vie-en-whump.tumblr.com/post/177963734617/october-approaches-in-celebration-of-our-cozy)
  2. Title is a reference to a podcast called ["Sex and Other Human Activities"](https://soundcloud.com/sexandotherhumanactivity)
  3. A lot of terminology and most of the Asgardian character names that I had to invent came from the  _[Sagas of Icelanders,](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/102534.The_Sagas_of_Icelanders)_[ed. Jane Smiley](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/102534.The_Sagas_of_Icelanders).
  4. '9. Stranded' alludes to l'appel du vide, so I cited a very interesting [article/audio segment on it from WBUR](http://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/29/the-call-of-the-void).
  5. The plot for '22. Friendly Fire' was cobbled together with heavy inspiration from a number of sources including: _[The Saga of the Völsungs](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1152), _ Wagner's _Ring Cycle,_ and a poem called _[Helreith Brynhildar](http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe29.htm). _ (That chapter also contains a reference to a line from Episode 10 of Netflix's _The Haunting of Hill House._ )
  6. A podcast retelling of _The Saga of the Völsungs_ : [Episodes 3A-3E of ](https://www.mythpodcast.com/)[_Myths & Legends._](https://www.mythpodcast.com/)
  7. ["The Ring Cycle in 2.5 Minutes"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgzZ_nLOJJE) was essential for making sure I had the plot all worked out.
  8. I forgot to cite it in the chapter itself, but if you want to have the horrifying realization that what I wrote in '25. Restraints' is actually not that outlandish, the documentary _[Survivor's Guide to Prison (2018)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFv7lfZJHMY) _ is horrifying and on Netflix.



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on tumblr (bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com) for additional overthinking, occasional writing progress posts, further misuse of mythology, and other shenanigans.


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